Love Songs from a Shallow Grave

into the road to talk to someone at the upstairs window. But he didn’t step back.
    “It’s all right, Rajid. It’s me, Daeng. Can I help you?”
    A figure stepped from beneath the awning and stood in the deserted roadway, and the breath was sucked from Daeng in one single gust, stolen from her. She fell to the floor fighting to breathe. She bloodied her elbow against the table leg. She felt the tingling of her nerves at her fingertips and in her toes. Her stomach cramped. She was angry, no, furious.
    “How dare you?” she called, and climbed to her feet. “I mean, just how dare you?” She staggered to the window. The figure was still there, brazenly haunting her. “I’m not one of you,” she cried. “You can’t do this to me. Go do your scary stuff somewhere else. It won’t work here. I’m past you now.”
    “Daeng?” the figure said.
    “Stop it!”
    Her tears had come despite all her efforts to hold them back.
    “Stop it and leave me alone.”
    “Daeng, it’s me.”
    She glared at him through her tears, expecting him to ignite, at least dissolve, something dramatic and ghostly.
    Something worthy. But he stood in his inappropriate T-shirt and Bermuda shorts and dripped onto the roadway. “I could really use a spicy number two,” he said.

21
VERY GREEN TOURISM
    H ow word got around so fast, nobody knew. But even before the first cock crowed, before the first hornbill cooed, the visitors started to arrive. Some suggested the actual crazy Rajid had seen Dr Siri emerge from the river and had sounded the alarm. Others cited dreams, or instinct, or just an urge to stop by Daeng’s noodle shop to see how things were going. They were all shocked but nobody was disappointed with what they found. The loss of weight didn’t hurt the doctor’s looks any, they agreed. The women said he was even more irresistible. Gaunt was in this year and the scars on his shaved head gave him a rugged demeanour. His timing and coordination might have been off just a tad. He took a moment to consider before answering questions, if he understood them at all. Perhaps he stuttered here and there and gave more inappropriate responses than he used to. He’d only had four hours of sleep before they started arriving.
    In fact, he found all the excitement bewildering. Faces jumped in and out of his vision like camera flashes. Some he recalled but most were faded photographs in a forgotten album. Dtui was in focus and clear, as were Phosy and Geung. But when Judge Haeng turned up at nine, Siri was respectful and didn’t make any sarcastic comments, which perhaps frightened everybody most. They all agreed that Dr Siri must have walked through the burning peat fields of Satan. They were glad to have him back even if he was…a bit odd. Odd was better than dead. But when they pushed him on what had happened there in hell, Madame Daeng was always around to deflect the questions.
    “He’ll tell you when he’s ready,” she said.
    The only private conversation she allowed her husband was a brief interlude with Civilai. The old friends stood together in the backyard, staring at the chicken droppings.
    “I have something to say, but you’re a bit of a moron right now,” Civilai said.
    “Yes,” Siri agreed.
    “A bit like taking advantage of a…well, anyway. I suppose ‘I’m sorry’s as good a place to start as any. I’m sorry I deserted you. Sorry I didn’t do more to find you. Sorry I acted like a…Are you laughing?”
    “Yes.”
    “At me?”
    “N’yes.”
    “Why? May I ask?”
    “Cause yours an…you’re an arse.”
    “That’s probably the medication talking. I’ll let it pass.”
    “It’s me talking, you arse. You don’t if. I mean. If, the Rouge nabbed you, do you thought I’d have done something else? Something different?”
    “Yes, you’re a hero. You’d have strolled into the hotel dining room with an AK47 and poked it in Big Brother’s belly and insisted they release me.”
    “Then we…we both be dead. Dumb idea. Doing nothing’s not worse than doing something stupid, isn’t it? You used your brain. I didn’t. I de…deserve to be…you know.”
    “I just feel – ”
    “You did everything that was humanly poss…possible.”
    They stood for a few more seconds studying the droppings. Civilai coughed and turned back towards the shop.
    “Nice cliché,” he said.
    “I’m b…brain damaged. It’s the bes…bes…best I can do.”
∗
    Before ten, to the vocal displeasure of a shop