“Loss of appetite, nausea, bruising, and he’s been hiding his jaundiced eyes behind dark glasses hoping I wouldn’t notice. He’s been in bed for a couple of days with his supposed diarrhea. I believed he was getting treated by you. If you’d considered it serious I was sure you’d get in touch with me. I should have—”

“Do you have transportation?” she asked.

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Twelve

Let Me Get This Straight. You’re Dead?

It was certainly the worst movie Jane had ever made. It was in competition for the worst movie made by anyone. But Siri believed that no man, having watched Barbarella groaning through her ten-minute orgasm in the excessive pleasure machine, could have avoided milking the goat when he got home. It was blatant soft-porn sci-fi and he and Civilai were disappointed that she’d agree to make it. But that didn’t stop Siri from putting up a Barbarella poster in the mobile ward to cheer up the injured soldiers.

And here he was piloting the throbbing pink 41st-century spacecraft, looking through the windshield at a blackboard dotted with fairy lights that was supposed to be the universe. And supposedly floating in that two-dimensional space at the end of a rope was Civilai in a Chinese postman’s uniform.

“What are you doing out there?” Siri shouted. “You’re ruining the scene.”

“The scene ruined itself,” said Civilai without the benefit of a microphone. “Will you stop trying to rescue this movie and its low budget special effects? Here I am supposedly in space with no oxygen tank, and I’m dangling rather than floating. With Jane in the driver’s seat, nobody noticed the scenery. But you . . . ?”

“What exactly are you doing in my dream?” Siri asked.

“Not a dream, Siri. This is the reality. You speeding out to Kilometer Six on the back of Dr. Porn’s motor scooter, that’s the dream. You with a heart thick as sticky rice, tears streaming down your face, that’s the dream.”

“This feels like one of Auntie Bpoo’s mind tortures,” said Siri.

“No. Sorry. Bpoo’s off in her trailer sulking. I don’t know what you said to her, but it really upset her. She’s wearing a football kit, boots and all. So you can’t blame her. She has nothing to do with this scene. This is just your imagination and me, old pal.”

“And what’s the moral?” Siri asked.

“There has to be a moral?”

“Usually.”