SLSL "The Small Rain" Lardass or Deadass?

[Paul Mackin]

Is Lardass dead,  just trying to act that way, or unable not to act that 
way? He mainly withholds reaction on the first encounter with corpses. 
Others notice he is not himself (so to speak).  He says it is his 
stomach. The reader is tipped off that he is somehow affected because 
"after breakfast he makes one of those spur of the moment decisions 
which it is always fun to speculate upon afterwards." He voluntarily 
(not under orders) spends a long day out on the tug pulling in the 
dead.  This is a guy who avoids work details like the plague. Still no 
emotion shown. He returns to his quarters and it is time for his date. 
He denies any excitement  at the prospect. Calls his mental state sheer 
momentum. Is seemingly almost indifferent to Buttercup.  Oddly she is 
aroused (it sez) by what we can only see as a dead lump. It would help 
to know what she sees that we can't. Is Lardass so overwhelmed he can 
only present a numbed exterior?

A little baffled.

P.