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See, Mr. Geung had to constantly mop brows with a towel.
    All they learned was that the lady had lost a great deal of blood. The attack was the probable cause of death, as she had certainly been alive when it began. Her bowels were a mess, but there was nothing life-threatening there. She was otherwise in good shape and should have been able to fight off any normal suburban predator.
    Everything came down to the size of the wounds. That’s what continued to worry Siri. While Dtui typed up the report and Geung scrubbed down the examination room, he studied the marks on the agar molds. He used a ruler to measure the size of the jaw and the spread of the claw marks.
    By 11:30, when his assistants were in the dissection room labeling jars, Siri, for no other reason than the dream of the previous morning, had come to the illogical conclusion that Auntie See had been attacked and killed by a bear.
     
    It was lunchtime. Civilai had carried his rolls down to the riverbank and was sitting on the log, waiting for his lunch partner to arrive. He was moderately engrossed in the Siang Pasason newspaper when Siri tapped him on the shoulder.
    “Excuse me, sir. Do you mind if I join you?”
    “Well, all right. Until someone better comes along.”
    “Like Crazy Rajid?”
    “He’d do. But see. He spends most of his days on his knees in the water.”
    They looked out to the narrow band of river that remained at the end of the dry season. Rajid’s bald head poked from the water like a happy black penis. He was the town nutcase. Nobody knew which traveling Indian family had deserted him as a child some fifteen years before. He was just discovered one day sitting on the steps of the Black Stupa. Locals fed him regularly without question, and he repaid them by smiling and spreading his immutable happiness around Vientiane. He had no home and no need of one.
    “In this heat, I envy the fellow.”
    “It is hot, isn’t it?”
    “Damned hot.”
    Siri sat and started to unwrap his baguette. Since their abortive date, Mrs. Lah had shifted her franchise from the hospital. His lunch now came from a Vietnamese woman at the end of his lane. She offered two choices: sweet or savory. He could never guess what was inside, just by looking. He was often none the wiser after the contents reached his palette. Still, food was fuel.
    “Anything interesting in the paper?”
    Civilai laughed. Printed news under a one-party system rarely exposed, unearthed, or titillated.
    “Czech skiing conditions are improving.”
    “That’s a relief.”
    “Football results from Albania. Part seventeen of Lenin’s life story. Our military attaché’s in Cuba.”
    “Anything about Laos?”
    “Laos? Now you’re asking. Laos. Laos. Wait. Here. A photo of happy smiling farm workers in Savanaketh above a story of a bumper cabbage harvest.”
    “They’re standing in a rice field.”
    “Maybe they’re taking a break.”
    Civilai scrunched up the newspaper and threw it over his shoulder. He was a brilliant man who tired easily of bull. He despaired of Laos’s potential that was being wasted by his plodding colleagues. But he definitely agreed that it was far better to be a plodding communist than a rampant capitalist.
    He looked across the Mekhong toward the Thai fascists and bit into his homemade roll. In this heat, he lacked the enthusiasm to eat. There was so little meat on his bones, he was afraid that if he didn’t stop sweating soon, there wouldn’t be anything left of him. He smiled as he remembered his morning meeting.
    “Have you heard about the senator’s visit?”
    “The only way I hear anything is through you, Comrade.”
    “Well, we’ve had a delegation from Washington.”
    “They want their bombs back?”
    “They’re insisting that we give them access to look for MIA’s.”
    “What’s an MIA?”
    “It’s a military person who gets lost in battle.”
    “Wait. I thought they claimed they didn’t have any combat troops in