Life is a cruel, meaningless race that constantly throws excruciating obstacles into your path and the only prize when you finally cross the finish line is death. Sorry if I sound cynical, but after what I went through you’d probably feel the same. The universe is senseless, unjust and indifferent and if a God exists he must be insane.
For no further proof, take my older brother Martin.
Growing up, we couldn’t have been any more different. I respected my elders, stayed out of trouble, and only hung out with other kids I knew my parents would approve of. Martin was in and out of juvie from the time he was twelve and stole a TV set from the back of a pick-up truck in a Walmart parking lot…then threw it at the owner when confronted, breaking two of his toes.
I stayed away from drugs and alcohol. Martin was a full-fledged stoner and drunk by the time he was fifteen.
I studied hard, paid attention in school, and graduated top of my class with a full scholarship to the state university. Martin got expelled his sophomore year of high school after he was caught by the gym teacher banging the school slut in the boys’ locker room.
I went on to college, earned a business degree, married, and moved to a nice house in the suburbs. Martin slacked off on one dead-end minimum wage job after another (usually getting inevitably fired), picking up unemployment in between for as long as he could legally milk the system before he had to find work again.
My wife and I chose not to have children until we were ready. Martin owed child support to at least six different women by the time he was twenty-five.
Basically, I did everything right and Martin didn’t. So I think you can excuse me for being bitter when my life began to turn to shit when I was twenty-eight and Martin’s life began to improve.
One day my wife of six years confronted me with the news that she was two months pregnant. I was overjoyed…until I did the math in my head and realized we hadn’t had unprotected sex in four months. She went on to inform me that 1) she was having an affair and had been for the last two years, 2) she didn’t love me anymore and wasn’t sure she ever had, 3) she was filing for divorce, and 4) she was asking for the house, my car, and full alimony…all of which the court later awarded her.
I didn’t handle that all very well.
Not long after my divorce was finalized, I got fired from the company I worked for after a female co-worker accused me of sexual harassment. My crime was complimenting her on her new hairstyle.
I had to move into a shitty apartment in the city. The only job I could get (because of the sexual harassment allegation on my record) was working the night shift in a convenience store for $8.50 an hour.
The icing on the shit cake was the night the store got held up…which, unluckily for me, happened when I was alone during my shift. I handed over my wallet and phone along with the contents of the register like the ski-masked, gun-toting gentlemen requested, giving him no trouble in the process, but he still decided it was necessary to pistol-whip the shit out of me before taking off. I was left with a broken jaw, fractured cheekbone (both of which required surgery) and a swollen eye. I got stuck with the medical bills because since I was still technically “part time” (even though I usually worked at least fifty hours a week) I didn’t qualify for employee health benefits.
So yeah, after all that, I guess I had a pretty shitty disposition about how my life turned out after I had worked hard and done everything I was supposed to. My outlook wasn’t improved when my lowlife sibling called me one night to excitedly break the news: he was now a multi-millionaire.
He had won $10 million playing the state lottery.
I pretended to be happy for him and congratulated him on his good fortune, the phone gripped so tightly in my hand I thought I might crush it. I felt dizzy. The room was spinning. I thought I was going to pass out.
It seemed to sum of the essential pointlessness of existence in a nutshell: my brother, a lazy, nearly unemployable ex-delinquent/non-high school graduate and deadbeat dad who had never displayed a modicum of maturity or responsibility his entire life was now rich, and I, a hard-working, educated, law-abiding citizen was living in a slum, working a low-paying dead-end job, divorced, and in massive debt. It was so fucking unfair. I think I actually thought about killing myself for a second. Fortunately, the urge passed.
A few days later I watched on TV, bemused, as Martin, wearing a gaudy Hawaiian shirt, accepted his big novelty check for $10 million from a state lottery official, a big shit-eating grin on his face. I just shook my head and sighed at the injustice of it, wondering why nice guys always came in last and undeserving assholes always seemed to get ahead.
That happened four years ago. And, as if to show that the universe wasn’t as insane as I had first thought, things didn’t go as well for Martin as he had probably expected them to. I should have seen it coming, really. It was so obvious what was going to happen. Give an idiot who’s never worked for it or learned the value of money a huge bundle of cash and you know no good’s going to come of it – a fool and his money, and all that.
After taxes, Martin only had about five million leftover, which while not peanuts, isn’t as huge a fortune as some people think it is. Add someone with a penchant for reckless spending and impulsive buying and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. Instead of investing his windfall or hiring a financial advisor to handle his cash, Martin went wild, buying a McMansion in a gated community, a luxury car, and a whole bunch of expensive crap (high-end electronics, designer clothes, a Rolex, etc.). He also pissed away a good chunk of his money on useless purchases he was never going to need or use (including a sail boat I don’t think he ever even took out on the water). I know all this because last year he was on a TV program showcasing former lottery winners who lost it all. What was left of his winnings quickly got snatched away by the court after Martin’s ex-girlfriends came out of the woodwork demanding back child support for all of his illegitimate kids. Within four years of winning, Martin had gone from riches to rags. Not only was he broke, but he was in huge debt. To console himself, Martin turned to his old crutches – drugs and alcohol, and was arrested more than once for DUI and possession of narcotics.
I would be lying if I told you I didn’t watch my brother’s downward spiral with a certain amount of vindictive glee, taking a sense of sadistic pleasure in his misery. After all, in those four years of living high on the hog, he had never once offered to share any of his wealth with his only sibling, who he knew was struggling financially.
But I never wished any harm on him. So I was genuinely shocked when last year two police officers came to see me and inform me that Martin was dead – suicide. At the end of his rope, his back against the wall, broke and drowning in debts, Martin had drunkenly put the barrel of a shotgun in his mouth. He had died alone and had been dead for at least three days before anyone had noticed the smell coming from the seedy motel room where he’d been staying ever since he’d been kicked out of the mansion he had been living in after hitting it big.
I wouldn’t exactly say I was devastated by his death. We had never really been close and I had always resented him for his sleazy behavior and irresponsible lifestyle, but he was still my brother and I was sorry that he had allowed himself to sink to such a low point that he had felt he had no other option than self-annihilation.
My parents and I were the only ones at his funeral (he had no real friends; all the people he had gotten close to after winning had ‘mysteriously’ distanced themselves from him after his cashflow dried up). We had him cremated and scattered his ashes in a lake (the location had no significant meaning to Martin’s life, but we honestly had no idea what else to do with the ashes).
A week after my brother’s funeral I came back home after yet another shitty late shift at the convenience store.
I had no sooner entered my darkened apartment and shut the door then the barrel of a pistol was shoved against my left temple. I froze, my heart jumping in my chest. A menacing voice hissed from the shadows to my right: “Don’t move.”
I braced myself for the worst, thinking it was a pair of burglars and I was about to get robbed again, maybe even killed. Or maybe it was a couple psychos who were going to subject me to a slow, tortuous death for their own sick amusement.
There was a click and the lights came on in my apartment. I slowly, cautiously, glanced around. Two large men wearing black leather jackets stood, one on each side of me, both aiming guns in my face. Their faces were hard, their eyes cold. To my surprise, the man on my right, the one who had flipped the light switch, spoke my name, asking it to confirm my identity. I answered in the affirmative.
“You better come with us,” he said. “The Russian wants to see you. Now.”
I had no idea who ‘The Russian’ was, but I was too scared to ask questions. And I was in no position to say no to the two large, intimidating men who were aiming guns at me.
I just nodded.
“Try anything and you’re fuckin’ dead,” the man to my left warned me.
I nodded again.
The men put their guns in their jacket pockets, but kept their hands on them, aimed at my back. They ushered me out of my apartment and guided me down the hallway and into the elevator, then down into the lobby and outside.
A dark sedan was parked at the curb outside my apartment building. The man on my right opened the rear passenger door and the one on my left prodded me into the backseat with the gun in his pocket. He got in beside me, keeping the concealed pistol on me while the other man got in the driver’s seat, started the engine, and pulled away from the curb.
We drove in silence for over an hour through the city. I wanted to know who they were, what this was about, and where we were going, but was too scared to open my mouth. My heart was thudding. I had never been more terrified in my life than I was on that night. My mind was racing with questions. What was going to happen to me?
We drove out to the docks on the outskirts of the city and stopped outside a large warehouse. I looked around. It was pitch black and totally deserted. There wasn’t a sign of life in this part of the city at this time of night. The men got out and pulled me out of the car, forcing me down an alley to a service door beside the loading docks. One of them unlocked it, and they led me across a vast, empty warehouse floor, then down a hallway to a wooden door. One of them opened it, then they dragged me in.
I looked around, surprised. It was an office. Well decorated and elegant with lush red carpeting. A well-polished mahogany desk stood on the opposite side of the room, and seated in a leather-upholstered chair on the other side was a large, broad-shouldered man in an expensive but somewhat ill-fitting suit. He looked to be in his late fifties with shaggy gray-streaked black hair and a rough, heavily-seamed face that was set into a perpetual scowl. His eyes were dark, intense and intimidating. I guessed this was The Russian, a suspicion confirmed when he barked something in Russian to the two men, who obediently let go of my arms and stepped back.
Bewildered, I looked back at them, then forward to the man sitting at the desk. He regarded me for a moment, then gestured to an empty chair in front of the desk. “Have a seat, Mr. Lowell,” he told me in accented English.
I did as I was told.
The Russian opened an ornate humidor on his desk and removed a large cigar. He bit the end off, spit it out, put the cigar in his mouth, and lit it with a gold Zippo. There were several jeweled gold rings on the fingers of his right hand. He puffed on his cigar, exhaled leisurely, then looked at me. “I’m sure you must be wondering what this is all about, Mr. Lowell,” he told me.
I found my voice. “Yes, I was kind of wondering.”
“It’s about your brother. The late Mr. Martin Lowell.”
I stared at him, surprised. “My brother?”
“Yes. I’m afraid you are in some – how you say? – hot water because of him.”
“I don’t understand. Martin’s dead.”
“Yes. But you are very much alive.”
The Russian began to explain. As I listened, I felt a sinking sensation in my stomach. It all gradually became clear.
About three weeks before his suicide, a destitute Martin, in a desperate last-ditch bid to save himself from financial ruin, had gone to the Russian and had taken a rather sizable “loan” out…which he had then promptly blown at the race track in a failed, ill-conceived ploy to turn a profit on his “investment” and pay off some of his creditors. Unfortunately, his luck hadn’t been in this time and all of the horses he had bet on had lost.
Knowing he was royally fucked and that the Russian wasn’t going to politely send him a bill when the payment was due, Martin had offed himself.
“What does that have to do with me?” I dared to ask the Russian.
The Russian explained that since Martin was dead and I was his only close living relative (our parents lived in another state) I had “inherited” my brother’s debt to the Russian.
“How much?” I asked, my lips feeling numb.
“Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.” The Russian answered.
For a moment I thought I was going to pass out. The room seemed to spin around me.
“I don’t have that kind of money,” I confessed, trying to keep my composure and sound calm, even though I felt like I was going to throw up. “I’m divorced and paying alimony. I work a crappy job. I–”
“I am well aware of your own financial situation, Mr. Lowell,” The Russian interrupted me, “but don’t worry, you don’t have to pay me back that amount in cash. I can be quite reasonable. I was actually thinking we could – how you say? – ‘take it out in trade.’ “
“What kind of trade?” I asked, although I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
“A term of service to me. You will work for me and do everything I demand of you without question until the debt is paid off. I would estimate…” he paused, seeming to do some calculations in his head. “Ten years.”
Ten years?! a voice screamed in my mind, appalled. I felt like this couldn’t actually be happening, this had to be some kind of nightmare. I tried to will myself to wake up. It didn’t happen. “What if I refuse?” I asked cautiously, fearing the answer.
The Russian smiled at me thinly, but his eyes remained cold. “Then I will have my men kill you. Slowly. They will cut you into pieces, a little at a time and use blowtorches to stop the bleeding. You will die in agony, and will have wished for death long before it happens. Then my men will do the same to your ex-wife and her husband and their son. Then they will find your parents and do the same to them.”
I looked at him, horrified.
His attitude suddenly turned harsh and he scowled at me and spoke threateningly: “And don’t think of going to the police. They cannot protect you. I have people on – how you say? – the inside, and if you go the authorities, word will get back to me. And I shall be very, very angry.”
I could see in his eyes he was telling the truth. I had no choice, no other options. I was trapped in a box. I gulped and said: “Alright. Whatever you want.”
His smile returned. He beamed at me. “I am happy to hear that, Mr. Lowell. You have made a wise decision.”
*****
The Russian went on to explain what my new “job” would entail and what would be expected of me. It actually wasn’t as horrible as I had been afraid it would be. I would be a “delivery man” and would drive a van. Twice a month I would get a call telling me where I was expected to go to pick up a “shipment” and what time I should be there. Once the van was loaded with the “merchandise” all I had to do was drive it to the docks where it would be unloaded and placed on a ship.
It seemed pretty straightforward and I was in no position to object or ask questions. I didn’t even ask what exactly the “shipments” in question would consist of. I figured the less I knew, the better. I wasn’t an idiot, and thought I had some idea what it could be. Drugs, maybe. Or stolen goods. Maybe even weapons.
I was wrong, though. It was much worse than any of those things.
*****
A week later, on my day off, I got my first call from The Russian telling me my first “delivery” was ready to be picked up. He gave me an address and told me to be there at exactly 11 p.m. that night, then hung up.
I took a bus downtown and got off a couple blocks away from the address I had been given. I was in a pretty sketchy part of the city with condemned slums and burned-down businesses all around me – a great place to be mugged or killed or both at 11 o’clock at night.
I nervously walked down the sidewalk to my destination, scanning my surroundings for any potential dangers. I didn’t see another living soul.
A couple blocks up I spotted a big white van parked outside a boarded-up pizza place. Three men in dark clothes were leaning against it, smoking cigarettes, seemingly waiting for someone.
I apprehensively approached them. They looked at me. None of them were the two guys who had broken into my apartment and taken me to meet The Russian, but they seemed to know who I was without being told.
One of them, a muscular, broad-shouldered blond man in his late thirties who looked like an ex-football player, stepped up to me and introduced himself as Mitch. Later, I found out he was one of The Russian’s top enforcers and had been tasked with accompanying me on my first delivery to make sure everything went without a hitch.
Mitch told me the “shipment” was ready to be picked up, then opened the driver-side door and motioned for me to get in, and told the other two men to get in the back, which they did. I got into the driver’s seat and Mitch got in the passenger side and shut his door. “Think you can handle this?” he asked me, indicating the van.
“Yeah,” I think so,” I replied.
“Good.” He told me a nearby address and instructed me to drive there. It was a long-abandoned delicatessen. Mitch directed me around the side and down a narrow, trash-strewn alleyway, telling me to back up to the rear door and stop.
“Stay here,” Mitch ordered me, then hopped out and went around the van, opening the rear. I waited, assuming they were loading the Russian’s mystery cargo. I tried to get a look in the rearview mirror, but there was only about three feet of space between the back of the van and the rear of the delicatessen. I couldn’t see much. About twenty minutes later, Mitch came around and got back in the passenger seat. “Done,” he told me.
I heard a sound coming from the rear of the van: sobbing. Someone was back there, crying. I only heard it for a second or two before one of the two men in back pulled the door shut behind them.
Surprised and confused, I looked at Mitch questioningly, but his face remained blank and he offered no explanation. “Drive back to the warehouse,” he told me flatly.
I stepped on the gas and started heading across the city in the direction of The Russian’s warehouse on the docks.
We drove in silence, Mitch staring impassively straight ahead. I kept throwing curious glances at the back of the van, but there was a metal partition separating the front from the back and I couldn’t see what was back there. I could very faintly hear muffled sounds from the rear, but they were very faint and indistinct: I later learned the back of the van had been specially sound-proofed.
We were about two-thirds of the way to the docks when I saw flashing red and blue lights in the rearview mirror. My heart skipped a beat. “Shit,” I muttered, alarmed.
“Don’t worry about it,” Mitch said very calmly, “Just pull over and keep your mouth shut.”
I pulled to the side of the street and parked. The police cruiser stopped behind me and after a minute or so an officer got out and approached the driver’s-side window. He looked in at me and Mitch. “Did you know your left taillight’s out?” the officer asked me, wasting no time on pleasantries.
“No I didn’t officer, thank you for telling me,” I answered, surprised at how even my voice was.
“Let me see your driver’s license and registration.”
Before I could dig out my wallet, Mitch replied from beside me: “That won’t be necessary, officer. Here…” He reached across me, extending a bulging white envelope to the officer.
The officer accepted the envelope, puzzled. He glanced at Mitch suspiciously, then opened the envelope and peeked inside. Whatever was inside caused his eyes to widen in shocked. “Jesus,” I heard him mutter under his breath. He looked back at Mitch, seeming to reappraise him. “You one of The Russian’s men?” he asked. Now it was my turn to be shocked.
“That’s right,” Mitch said, nodding slowly.
The officer pocketed the envelope. He looked to me. “If I were you I’d get that taillight dealt with ASAP.” Without another word he went back to his cruiser, got in and drove away.
I sat there, bewildered. What the fuck had just happened?
“Drive,” Mitch ordered me, snapping me out of my daze. “We don’t have all night.”
I put the gear back in drive and pulled back onto the street.
We got to the docks and Mitch directed me to drive around The Russian’s warehouse. I drove around the back and stopped. Mitch got out without another word and pounded on the side of the van. “We’re here!” he shouted.
The rear door opened and the two men in back hopped out. I could hear the sobbing again. It sounded like it was coming from more than one person. Then I heard something else that pierced my heart like a cold icepick: the high, quivery voice of a young child in tears.
“I want to go home!”
Then another child’s voice: “I want my mommy!”
Another: “Please, let me go home!”
Startled, I unbuckled my seatbelt and opened the driver’s-side door. I had to see. I had to know what was going on.
I got out and went around to the back of the van. Mitch and the other two men were clustered together, talking in low voices. They threw me a brief, unconcerned glance, then went back to whatever they were discussing.
I could hear a chorus of sobbing and pleading, young voices coming from the back of the van. I glanced in…and just stared. “Oh, God,” I moaned.
The back of the van was full of children. At least a dozen, crammed together, boys and girls, the youngest no older than six, the oldest no more than twelve. They were all crying, their tear-streaked faces frightened and confused. They looked at me, their eyes pleading.
Appalled, outraged, I spun around to face Mitch. “What the fuck is this?!” I shouted.
“It doesn’t concern you,” Mitch told me matter-of-factly, “It’s The Russian’s business.”
I pointed into the van. “Who are they?” I demanded.
“They’re The Russian’s merchandise.”
“They’re kids, for Christ sake!”
Mitch looked at me as if I was an idiot. “I know they’re kids. That’s why the Russian’s client wants them.”
I opened my mouth to reply – I don’t remember what I was going to say – but before I could get one word out, a pair of headlights swept around the building, momentarily blinding me. A black limousine pulled up beside us. Mitch and the other two men looked at it, squinting their eyes in the beams of the headlights. “The buyer’s here to inspect the merchandise,” Mitch said.
The uniformed driver got out of the limo and opened the rear door. A tall, thin, dignified-looking Asian man in his seventies got out, followed by two larger Asian men who had the look of bodyguards or henchmen. The tall, thin Asian man, dressed in a designer business suit, regarded us with a dour expression that was both severe and solemn. without a word, he approached the rear of the van and looked in at the children huddled inside. He said something in an Asian language I couldn’t identify to his two henchmen, who climbed into the back and began to roughly yank the kids out, one by one. I heard a metallic rattling, and only then did I notice that each of them had a steel chain padlocked to their ankles – a single chain, connecting them to each other, like slaves on a ship – to prevent them from trying to run away.
One of the kids began to struggle and thrash around. One of the goons viciously backhanded her, a girl of about ten, and she screamed in pain.
“Hey!” I shouted, shocked and outraged at this brutality, and stepped towards him without thinking. “What the fuck do you think–”
The goon spun towards me, suddenly holding a 9mm that was aimed directly in my face. He hissed something menacing to me in the same language as the old man – clearly, a threat.
I stepped back, raising my hands in the air, feeling cold.
Seeing I wasn’t going to be a problem, he went back to helping the other man unload the kids from the van.
When the last of the kids were out, Mitch spoke to them loudly in English: “Alright, kids, line up!”
They obediently filed out into a single straight row. The old man walked down the line, seeming to inspect each of them carefully in turn. Apparently satisfied, he nodded to himself then turned to Mitch and said in carefully enunciated English: “It is good.” He gestured to one of his huge thugs, who went back to the limo and came back a moment later holding a briefcase which he handed to Mitch. Mitch opened it and I caught a brief glimpse of its contents: stacks of hundred dollar bills. Mitch sat down the briefcase and took out a ring of keys which he tossed to the old man.
The old Asian man took out a smartphone and dialed a number, speaking briefly to someone on the other end in his native language.
A couple minutes later I heard a hollow metallic clank! from close by. Startled, I turned in the direction the noise had come from. For the first time I saw there was a large cargo ship at the end of one of the docks – a huge, bulking silhouette against the star-dotted night sky. It had been there all along, I just hadn’t noticed it. The sound I had heard had been a gangway door opening. Figures were emerging from the ship and coming down the dock towards us. About two dozen men, all Asian, all wearing ship’s crew uniforms. And they were lugging something with them, six oblong shapes that, as they got closer, gradually materialized into wooden shipping crates, each about the size of a refrigerator. And each crate had holes drilled into it.
Air holes.
I stood there with Mitch and the other two men from the van, watching this all transpire, feeling numb and unreal, like I was caught in a nightmare I couldn’t wake up from. No, I thought, feeling sick and helpless. No, this cannot be happening.
I wanted to do something, to stop it – but there was nothing I could do. I was outnumbered and these men were armed. I could only look on, feeling worthless, feeling like a coward, as the old man gave the keys to the men from the ship, who used them to unlock the chain from the ankles of the children and then forced them, two each, into each of the wooden crates and then nailed the lids on top. I could hear the kids struggling inside. Could hear their muffled screaming and wailing.
Then the men carried the crates back into the ship and closed the gangway. I heard the ship’s horn sound, then it began to pull away from the dock, towards the ocean.
The Asian man and his henchmen got back into their limo and drove away.
“Well,” Mitch said after a moment of silence, “that’s that.” He said it casually, but his nonchalance sounded a little forced, as if he was struggling to justify what had just transpired to himself.
The other two men walked away. I stood there, staring blankly at the ocean and the faint, receding speck of the ship in the distance, until Mitch clapped me on the shoulder and asked me if I needed a ride home.
“Yeah, sure,” I whispered unevenly.
He drove me back to my apartment in his Dodge Challenger. We didn’t say much on the drive, but when he stopped outside my building, before I got out, I asked him: “Where are they taking those kids?”
“That’s not really your business, is it?”
“Come on, Mitch – tell me.”
He smiled at me thinly, a humorless smile. He tried to keep his expression neutral, but his lips were twitching a little. He looked conflicted and I thought I detected a flash of self-loathing in his eyes. “Disneyland,” he told me tonelessly.
*****
I went up to my apartment and went straight to my bathroom where I vomited into the toilet until I was dry-heaving. I tried to look at myself in the mirror but couldn’t meet my own eyes. I thought about killing myself, just like Martin had, out of remorse. But then I remembered my parents and my ex-wife and her new family. I was afraid if I committed suicide The Russian might go after them to retaliate. I cried myself to sleep, feeling like a miserable excuse for a human being.
*****
Two weeks later, I got another call from Mitch. Another “shipment” was ready to be delivered.
I still felt like shit when it was over, but this time I didn’t cry or throw up.
*****
It’s been eight months, and I’m still working for The Russian, still driving vans to pick up his “merchandise” and deliver it the docks after dark. Twice a month I deliver the kids over to the Russian’s “client,” the elderly Asian man, who has them put into crates and loaded onto his ship bound for “Disneyland.”
Hundreds of them.
Young boys and girls, terrified and confused, crying and pleading for their mommies and daddies, begging to go home. Some of them I’ve since recognized from Missing Persons posters and the TV news. Kids abducted walking home from school and on their way back from the movies and snatched from playgrounds and even their own front lawns in broad daylight. And I’ve still got over nine more years of this to endure before my debt to The Russian is paid off.
This might sound sick to you, but I’ve kind of gotten used to it by now. You can adjust to anything after a while. You learn to harden yourself, to endure it. It’s just a job to be done. Someone’s got to do it. This isn’t anything new, after all. You hear stories about this kind of thing happening all the time, all over the world. It’s just another business. After a while all their faces just kind of blur together.
So that’s pretty much my story. My worthless brother won the lottery and blew it bigtime and I’m the one who’s paying for it. Life is a cruel, senseless game. There’s no justice in this world – or any other, for that matter. I tried to do everything right and it all blew up in my face through no fault of my own. And here I am now.
Shit. My phone just rang. Guess there’s another delivery I have to pick up.
Time to go to work.