The Coroner's Lunch Read Online Free PDF

most famous Thai film star there is.”
    “Oh yes? How does a country without any famous films get to have its own famous film star?”
    “They have famous films. At least they’re famous in Thailand. They make some lovely films.”
    “All shoot-’em-up violence and cheap romance.”
    “There. I knew you secretly watched them. Somchai’s like this really old person, but he still talks about love and romance.”
    “What is he, forty?”
    “Over fifty.”
    “Goodness. How do they keep them alive over there?”
    “And there’s nothing cheap about romance. There isn’t enough money in the world to buy love.”
    Siri looked up from his misspelled report. Dtui was standing with her back to him, looking up through the two remaining slats of the window. Although it was hard to judge from her back, she seemed upset. As far as he knew, she’d never been with a man. Her high standards pretty much eliminated her from the market.
    The romance she sought wasn’t to be had here in the morgue. It wasn’t to be found in the single room she shared with her sick mother, and probably it wasn’t in Laos at all. Men were two-dimensional creatures with specific three-dimensional tastes.
    There had been eras when large torsos were in high fashion, a symbol of wealth and plenty. Physiology went through cycles. But in the twentieth century, malnutrition was à la mode. Dtui with her laundry-bin build was off the scale. There were no suitors queuing at her door. They wouldn’t have to dig deep to find her kindness and humor, but they didn’t even bring a spade.
     
     
    When his report was redone, Siri took his sandwich, some bananas, and a flask of tea down to the river bank. Comrade Civilai was already sitting there on their log, sawing at his own home-made baguette with a blunt penknife. Siri laughed and sat beside him. Civilai sniffed at the air.
    “Hmm. What do I smell here? Rotting pancreas? Gangrenous kidney?”
    “If you do, they’re your own, you old fool. I haven’t so much as unbuttoned a cadaverous jacket all morning.”
    “Ah, what a life.” Civilai was still hacking at the stale bread. “Is that what the People’s Revolutionary Party pays you for? Sitting around? Flirting with your nurse? Teaching Igor to clap with both hands at the same time? Shit.” A chunk of sandwich sprang off his lap and rolled down the dusty bank. He re-wrapped the rest of his meal in its newspaper and gave chase.
    When the rains returned in the new year, the water would rise to just a few meters from their log. But it was now some thirty meters to the river’s edge, and every foot of dry riverbed had been reclaimed as garden allotments. This was good vegetable-growing dirt.
    Civilai began the climb back to their perch, rescuing his crust as he came. He had several lettuce leafs in his top pocket. He was dusty and sweating and hard-pressed for breath.
    “I don’t know why you don’t just eat it in one lump like normal people,” Siri said.
    Civilai grunted back. “Because,” he huffed, “I am a man of breeding.” He blew the red clay from his sandwich. “Because I don’t want to be caught biting chunks off a log of bread like some caveman. And because my mouth isn’t nearly as large as yours.” Having made his point, he nibbled politely at the bread.
    Civilai was Siri’s closest friend in the politburo, and that was probably due to the fact that he, too, was a little mad. But whereas Siri was passively-rebellious mad, Civilai was downright-brilliant mad. He was inspired and eccentric. He’d been the architect of most of the Party’s more adventurous ideas.
    He was, however, just a little too fast for the plodding socialist system around him. He reminded Siri of a lively dog he’d seen being taken for a walk by a French lady with the gout. The dog ran back and forth panting and drooling, skipping and tugging at the leash, but nothing it did could make that lady walk faster or change direction. Civilai bore more than his