Black face. Blue lips. Naked. She lies frozen on the metal slab. I watch her. I watch her face and know that she wasn't pretty before she died. Average maybe, below even, but not pretty. The coroner has sewed her lips into an upward curve. They were off when we found her, her lips that is. He placed them back on after the examination, but with an upward twist. I don't know why he's done this. I watch her face. She smiles in her death now. this makes me sad. Because she smiles though she may not have wanted to. Perhaps in this moment, she'd rather frown. The forehead is too wide. That's what bothers me the most. Her forehead is too wide and long, her eyes too bulky and bulging, her nose too thin and pinched, her mouth too fat, hanging, I watch her and know that even without the lip removal, the facial disfigurement, she wasn't pretty. I brand her with this judgment even though she can't defend herself. She smiles at my judgment, even though she'd probably prefer to frown at it.

"Some looker, this one, eh?"

This is my partner Simms.

I don't know his first name. He doesn't know mine. We don't prefer it this way. It's just standard procedure.

"I guess so."

"You're always guessing." He twists his eyes over to me in the manner that I've come to call his custom. It's a mixture of sarcasm, disdain, and merriment. He has a way of looking at you as if you're perpetually the butt of a secret joke.

"I guess so."

He sigh chuckles (if I had a better description, I'd use it) and turns to the coroner whose over at his desk, filling out a sheet of paper.

"Doc, what was the cause of death again?"

"Strangulation."

"Strangulation by what?"

"Hand."

The coroner speaks without looking up, without stopping his pen from slicing through the papers on his desk.The asian features set on his small frame make him seem callous, stern. His unmoved sense of calm makes me feel that he would sound the same if he had been asked a completely different question.


(If he were behind the counter of a deli.)

"Doc, what kind of cut is this kosher pastrami?"

"Strangulation."

"Blessed by a rabbi?"

"Hand."



etc., etc.