You shuffle up to the desk and drop your heavy bags to the floor with a flumpf. They’re actually not that heavy, but you’ve been carrying them for slightly too long. They don’t hang straight down by your sides, and so your arms had to hold them fifteen degrees outward, and now those arms ache and your hands feel pinched and clammy. You announce your arrival. There’s a bowl of red-wrapped sweets eyeing you up from the counter. You take one and unwrap it. Mint imperial. It’s always a mint imperial.