The Merry Misogynist

side. The breezes that skipped off the water suggested the rains might come on time this year and spare the earth any more suffering.
    “Dr Siri…?” Daeng began.
    “You know I’m always tempted to call you Noodle-seller Daeng whenever you say that?”
    By this time of night even their slurring was compatible.
    “I wasn’t referring to you.”
    “There’s another Dr Siri?”
    “That handsome young fellow I met in the south. I was a peanut in those days.”
    “You were never a peanut.”
    “I was. You just don’t understand. You know how peanuts live in their own little shell chambers, and they can see the peanut next door every day, but the gap between them’s too narrow to crawl through?”
    “I have to confess I’ve never really thought about peanuts like that.”
    “Well, I was that peanut. There you were with Boua, and you were in love then, and you were perfect together. And I was so close every day…but I couldn’t touch you. I couldn’t get through the gap. And once you both left, I never got over how close we’d been. Eventually I found myself a husband. He was a good man, a rebel like us. And we were content. But every time I saw a peanut it made me sad.”
    Siri laughed. “Daeng, you’re starting to sound like Judge Haeng.”
    “Don’t laugh at me. You know I have trouble expressing myself when I’ve had a drink or ten. I’m serious.”
    “How can you be serious about a peanut?”
    “Siri!”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “All I want to say is, even if you hadn’t been with Boua then, we were too important, too big for our own lives. If we’d tried to be together it wouldn’t have worked. It could never have been like this. But over the years we got smaller, and I crawled through to your chamber, and now we are…”
    “The happy peanuts.”
    “Exactly.”
    “My love, you’re so poetic when you’ve had a few drinks I should keep you sloshed all day.”
    “And all day I’d tell you how happy I am with you and thank you for taking me in.”
    They leaned their heads together.
    “Your turn,” she said.
    “To what?”
    “To say something nice about me.”
    “Shouldn’t it be spontaneous?”
    “Not necessarily.”
    Daeng poured them another drink and Siri considered what story might suit the occasion. He didn’t have any fruit or cereal analogies so he resorted to something he knew.
    “All right,” he said. “You know I told you about the visions I was having?”
    “The wormy lady and the dog?”
    “Yes, well, I told you they were spectres warning me that Rajid was in danger. But at the time I actually thought they were omens about me and the end of my life.”
    “I knew that.”
    “You did?”
    “Absolutely.”
    He wasn’t really surprised. Daeng had a far better understanding of Siri Paiboun than he did.
    “Anyway, once I got it into my head that I was on my way out, all I could think was how unfair it was that we’d had so little time together. If it had happened a year ago before our reunion I would have held out my wrists for the deathly shackles and gone happily. Now you’ve given me a reason to fight. I don’t want either of us popping off into the ether.”
    “That’s lovely.”
    They looked up at the clear, starry sky and grinned at the Great Bear, who always seemed to be falling on his backside.
    “The census,” she said.
    “You’ve just changed the subject, haven’t you?”
    “Not really. It’s an ongoing subject. It’s what you asked me on Wednesday, about a department that’s high profile, has a reasonable budget, whose employees might go back to the same location twice. It just came to me.”
    Siri sat up in his seat and glared at his wife.
    “To distribute and collect questionnaires,” Siri said.
    “Right.”
    “You’re brilliant.”
    “I know. Don’t tell Phosy yet.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because he’s a policeman. He’s not very subtle. He’d go strutting into their office with his police bell ringing and alert everyone that he’s on to them and, if he’s there, your maniac would go to ground.”
    “What then?”
    “Just wander in there. Have a look around. Just some old fellow interested in the census. No danger. You get your information and if you see anything fishy you tell Phosy. That way you can nail the bastard.”
    “And you came up with this plan while you were staring at the moon, billing and cooing with me?”
    “The woman’s brain has two hemispheres,” she slurred. “One for loving, one for hating. They