“You want me to?”

“Well, yes, considering it’s your other life. You’re heavily invested in the spirit dimension. You used to go over to the other side often to make sense of this world.”

“I know.”

“In fact, you haven’t chatted with Auntie Bpoo since . . . since Civilai died.”

She felt his body tense. Siri had entered a love-hate relationship with the spirit world some five years before when he discovered he hosted a thousand-year-old Hmong shaman. This was not a popular hitchhiker as he’d forced Siri to acknowledge there was a dimension his scientific mind had refused to accept. Since then he’d fought with malevolent spirits, traveled to the Otherworld, traded insults with his transvestite spirit guide, and talked with the departed. And now his closest friend was on that other side.

“I’ve been busy,” he said.

“No, you haven’t. It’s as if . . . as if you don’t want to go there because you’ll have to talk to him. Bpoo’s your guide. She’d make it all possible for you. She’d have a dramatic location set up for you both. She’d have an Otherworld log beside the Otherworld Mekong, you and him sitting there drinking fake rum and sugarcane juice and eating supernatural baguettes. It’d be fun.”

“It won’t. Can we not talk about it?”

“No. We talk about everything. This is a thing.”

The thunder rumbled as if it was stipulated in some celestial script.

“I miss him,” said Siri.

“Of course you do.”

“He was my dearest comrade. But it’s as if he’s shed a few dimensions and exists in a new form. It’s not him. When I shake his hand or kiss his cheek I feel nothing. The spirit world is a circus of illusion. I can create images and Bpoo can put them into a format that’s recognizable to me. I think I see my dead friend. I believe I can hear him speak. I’m conned into accepting a full-blown production and the more I wish it to be real, the more real it becomes.”

“You can’t believe otherwise,” said Daeng. “Your trips to the Otherworld have influenced events here, so it isn’t just your imagination. You’ve been able to make changes in this world from your experiences.”

“But I can’t bring anyone back,” said Siri. “And then what happens if I prefer my relationship with Civilai over there? I’d be gone for days at a time. No maître d’ noodles. No drinks by the river. Until now I’ve been able to control it. It’s the first time I haven’t been left to the whim of a dead transvestite spirit guide. I’m earthbound. I’ve learned how to shut the door. I’m afraid to open it again.”

Daeng smiled and kissed his cheek.

“I miss that warm empty place on the mattress and the stories when you come back, but I’d miss the real you a lot more.”

6/2/1941