Daffodil

On the twenty-seventh of April, in the year of the rat and four days before the end of days, rivers swelled and concrete began to melt. It was a time between two monsoons. Beyond Wat Chaiwatthanaram and the mountains, on the great alluvial plane and the Singu Plateau, in the land of the junta and disreputable options, the heat was oppressive. Some said it was like nothing anyone had experienced before, still hardly anyone complained, but that was not unusual because in Burma, an abysmal place where the quality of life was determined by the sharpest knife, where brutality was a metaphor for currency and everyman was the target of another man with a bad attitude, nothing made sense.

Stavros Papadopoulos was exhausted. Every muscle in his body ached, and he was pissing blood, but he wasn’t complaining. It was Saturday night, and it was his birthday, and what a birthday it was. The pintsized whores in the brothels in Bangkok, by far the best in the East, or anywhere else for that matter, had performed feats of magic. He had had the time of his life, the best sex ever, anywhere, anytime. If there was a little pain and suffering, he could care less. He was asleep by the time his head hit the pillow. Ten minutes later he was dreaming of upside down houses and little women. Twenty minutes later the phone rang ...