“Do they know finally how he died?” you asked her.
“I don’t know,” she said. “The doctors can’t tell much. His heart just stopped, that’s all they could say.” She sighed. “But I suppose it’s bangungot.”
You took that word in. Bangungot. “What’s that?”
Henry’s mother took a while to answer you. She closed her eyes for a bit, and then with a tiny shake of her head, she said, “Well, it’s a common kind of death that afflicts Asian men, always healthy ones, usually when they’re asleep. Usually when they’re full. I really don’t know what it is. But—well, it’s always very, very sudden.”
You began to imagine Henry on that bed, in that hotel.
“It’s not always fatal, you know,” Henry’s mother continued, her voice dropping a bit. “It’s always just a dream, a nightmare. But it’s when the dreamer
