Gods Without Men

2008

Covering the grid. The makeup girl was professional, and moved around her without speaking. Neither personal nor impersonal. Just some powder. Mirror-Lisa, framed in bulbs. Make you look like a person who sleeps.

Q. Why did you do it? Why would a person behave like that?

Because she wanted to. Not long enough as an answer. People want more. They want explanations that feel like explanations.

On the first day they’d flown vectors over the park. Flown tracklines, expanding squares. Walking, they’d swept the area. Go on, said Dawn, out of the shadows. Ask her a question. Judy, sitting in that rocking chair under the bighorn-sheep skull on the wall. Back and forth, back and forth, Navajo blanket on her lap like an old woman. Ask her anything you like.

Impossible to cover all that territory.

Just some powder.

Ma’am, we stopped vehicles, questioned hikers. Everything by the book. At a certain time you have to conclude. At a certain time you have to. At a certain time.

You conclude that this was an abduction and it’s possible the child has been taken across state lines.

There you are. All done.

The land and aerial searches.

The host came in and said hello. She looked older in real life. She looked like a real person. I am so sorry, she said. Jaz was getting made up in the next chair, a white napkin tucked into his collar. Awkwardly, he craned around. Lisa looked at the two women in the mirror, the one leaning over the other. My heart, said the presenter. My personal anger. The mirror made it easier to see her. It made it easier when she said why don’t we all join hands.

She liked to do that before a special show. A show where we are dealing with life in its rawest form.

Judy rocking in her chair. Had Lisa ever really been in that room, with its triangular windows, its animal-skin rugs and polished floors? Under the dome of the stars. Only the stone hearth and the rocking woman had substance. Everything else dissolved into the shadows.

Side effects may include drowsiness, skin irritation, severe allergic reaction. Stop taking the medication and immediately seek medical help if you have any of the following:

The people in the hallway were her people. She had people. Victim support, Park Service media relations. Her parents had hired a lawyer or maybe an agent. He acted like an agent. His name was Price and he wore western boots under his double-breasted silk suits. He wore monogrammed shirts and talked to her like they were both in a Lifetime movie of the week. When they interviewed him on television, he was described as the “family spokesperson.” Her mother took her aside and started acting strangely and eventually she worked out that she was trying to explain why they’d hired a goy. You don’t know how it is out here, she said. They need to deal with one of their own.

There was a ribbon campaign, briefly. There was a website with a counter and a PayPal button.

In a moment she’d have to speak. The headset girl said they were almost ready for their segment. The girl leaned in very close. Her breath smelled of strawberry-flavored gum. It was strange how they all came in so close. It was like being pregnant, everyone wanting to rub your belly for luck. The little squeezes, the hugs. The holding of the wrists. When you’re making up each step through force of will, creating ground on which to walk, it takes faith. Faith and an atmosphere of silence. People touching or talking to you can throw you off.

Her people. Really they were just there to wheel her about, like a patient on a gurney. She never said a word if she could help it.

Perhaps she could blame the pictures. There’d been a collage of photos behind the bar, groups of smiling young Marines, arms thrown over one another’s shoulders or fiercely squeezing girls. Over the bar were more photographs, framed black-and-white portraits of heavy-jawed men on plain backgrounds. Down below, everyone had a world — a fragment of counter, stark and shiny in the flash, a car hood, a beer poster, a table and chair. Up there, the heroes floated in the milky-white amniotic fluid of their heroism, safe from harm. The bottles against the smeared mirror, the tangled string of Christmas lights; the place reminded her of a roadside shrine she’d once seen in Mexico. She’d taken pictures while Jaz read out the names on the votive candles. Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe. Contra el Mal de Ojo y Para Atrear La Fortuna. How many of these red-eyed bottle wavers were dead? Or had no legs? That was the difference now. Wonders of modern medicine. All coming home with chunks blown out of their brains or PTSD or missing limbs, as if by failing to die they’d also failed to complete a mandatory process, hadn’t followed the correct procedure for their transformation into black-and-white floating heads.

And that was when he came up and asked if she’d like to play a game of pool. It wasn’t complicated. She could already see him as he would be in the future, wheeling himself around. The sideways glances at the mall. The screaming-eagle decal on the chair. It was strange. She’d never had a premonition, but she saw this very clearly.

Maria Dolorosa.

She thought about the sand in her hair, her sweaty clothes. She took a gulp of her vodka soda.

He repeated his question.

Swelling of the lips, face, throat and tongue. May impair your ability to drive or operate heavy machinery. Some people taking this medication have engaged in activities such as driving or making telephone calls and later have no memory of these activities.

It was time. She gave herself up to the strawberry-gum girl, floating along with an arm to rest on, a guiding hand in the small of the back. Her own hand was placed in Jaz’s. It lay there, a damp fish on his papery palm. He was talking to her, using a warm tone, his trying-to-reach-you tone. Go toward the light, said the strawberry-gum girl, and launched them on set.

There was applause. The host hugged, patted, performed the holding of the wrists. She smelled of some powerful lilac deodorant. She smelled like an office bathroom. They sat down on the couch.

We’re so glad. Our hearts. Such a difficult. Tell me.

Well Sally he reminded me of my cousin Nate made me feel beautiful like a woman you know how important that is for a mom well Sally I’m glad you asked because it was a cry for help you have to appreciate autism affects everyone parents carers we all live with my levels of stress were through the roof Sally I know your viewers understand how hard understand how very hard understand it’s hard for me to come here today and admit alcohol drugs obesity gambling abuse has been a problem in my life but now with the grace of God and my husband by my side. My husband. My

Jaz shifted in his seat. The host said something. He said something. The host said something else. All eyes were on her: the witch Lisa Matharu, the woman who didn’t cry for her son.

That was why they were there, after all. For the apportionment, the magical assignment of blame. Bad things do not happen without a reason. It is preferable, when thinking about bad things, to make them happen to bad people. We think of bad things all the time. Our thoughts have to go somewhere. If the bad people do not seem properly Bad, we must make them so, unless we can make them Good, but for that we apply the most exacting standards.

Q. You must feel terrible. What do you want to say to the person who has Raj?

We need everybody’s help to find him and so I’d like to say to anyone out there if you know what happened please say just pick up the phone bring him home he needs to be with his family.

The camera silently swooping forward on its trolley. Zooming in to catch the tears. So many TV appearances and no tears. It was against nature. She’d watched two women discussing her on this very show, women she’d never met, who were giving their opinions of her dress sense, her mothering, her mental health.

If you fear you have experienced this, talk to your doctor about another course of treatment. This medication may impair your ability to

He was only a boy. Twenty-two years old. A baby. He had sandy buzz-cut hair and ran corny lines on her and leaned into the bar in a way he’d probably seen in a movie. He told her all about himself, just spilled it out like he was interviewing for a job. The town with the water tower painted in the colors of his high-school football team, the times they used to drive out to the old quarry to swim. So generic, so stupid, it made her feel heavy and old and sad. The kid hadn’t seen a thing. Not a single goddamn thing in his whole life. When he stood behind her and adjusted her shot, she felt like crying. Instead she rubbed the side of his face. It was like petting a cat.

His breath falling on her neck, his middle-western voice murmuring in her ear, putting the moves, putting the moves. Then she saw his friends watching them from a booth and she was nineteen again, on a road trip she took with a college girlfriend through the South. Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas. Opening the door and feeling the men’s eyes on her, her cutoffs suddenly too short as she walked the gauntlet to the bar.

The table erupted into laughter.

Don’t pay them no mind, the boy said. They’re just jealous. She asked herself, then, what the hell she thought she was doing. She needed to get herself together. She needed air. Putting down her cue, she walked around the table, supporting herself as she went. Then she launched across the room and pushed open the bar door. Outside, the night air was cool, the stars holes drilled through the blue-black sky. Was she hungry? Maybe she should put some food in her stomach. There was a Chinese place next door. She could get chow mein, soak up some of the booze.

A light breeze was blowing. She was walking across the parking lot toward the divider when she felt a hand on her arm and turned to find him standing there. He didn’t say anything, just looked at her, and he was so blank and young, so unwritten on by life, that she let her body go slack and put her face up to his.

He slammed her back against someone’s truck and he had a fistful of her hair and she was kissing him hard and as she dug in his pants for his cock he pushed her T-shirt up to her armpits and started to suck on her nipple like a baby, cupping her ass in his two hands, sliding his fingers into her shorts to graze the seams of her panties. They paused for a moment, breathing in and out and in and out, and then he was tearing at her zipper and she wrapped her legs around his hips and just tried to hang on. There was some fumbling and he was inside her and she could feel the muscles tight in his back and the clench of his buttocks and she bit down hard on his shoulder to stop herself from crying out. He winced and wriggled his shoulder free, then put a hand on her throat, moaning oh fuck oh fuck as he came, shuddering against her like a patient with a fever. For a moment she hung there in space, stroking his hair as he shook, buried deep in his private dreams. Then they sank toward the ground, two separate people again, kneeling in the dust.

She could see figures lurking about in the shadows. Had his friends come out to watch? It didn’t matter. None of it was real. Whatever had just happened, it meant nothing, stood for nothing beyond itself. She was a thousand miles from her normal life, floating far out in space.

Price told them they needed to stay in the Los Angeles area to maximize what he called the “tail” of the coverage. The trick, he said, was to keep selling twists. Each day with no new development meant there was a chance an outlet would pull its reporting staff and put them on another story. He placed his hand on her knee. But you’ve got a good story, he said. A very good story. That’s one thing in your favor. He had his hand on her knee and Jaz did nothing. He didn’t even look in her direction. The boy was panting like a dog. She pushed him away. Did you come inside me, she asked. Yeah, he said. It was great. Older women are so fucking hot.

A story every day.

They moved to a hotel in Riverside. On the fifth morning Price organized what he called a “walkabout.” They went to the park, followed by cars and vans packed with journalists. There seemed to be more than before. They were wealthy New Yorkers, lost out west. There was a high level of human interest. When the media described Jaz, they used phrases like “financial wizard” or “Wall Street high-flyer.” She, on the other hand, was nothing. She was just the mother. Price gave directions, set up shots. A helicopter circled in the sky. They walked down the path toward the rocks, holding hands. At least no one expected them to smile.

Where was her boy? Would he walk out from behind one of the round white boulders? Was that what they’d arranged for her? A surprise?

Afterward, in the back of their minivan, Price performed the holding of the wrists. Sugar, he said. You did well. I’m proud of you. Back at the hotel, Price and her dad and the doctor argued about her medication. They stood over her as she sat on the edge of the bed, trying to watch TV. They were in the way.

You have black onyx, twenty-eight diamonds, very dramatic, if you took just the center of this it would be quite classic, but if you throw in the black onyx it’s something totally different so beautiful deep colors all natural not heat-treated you’ve got the gold a beautiful beautiful setting, don’t forget about our interest-free pays six pays half a year and it’s yours look at how dramatic it is look shipping handling taxes on top how dramatic let’s move on

One morning, when they were still at the motel, she opened the door to a young Hispanic woman. The woman had long curly hair that was falling over her face. She wore big gold hoop earrings. She shook her fist. He’s my son, she screamed. Not yours. You stay away from him. Lisa didn’t understand. My son, repeated the woman. He was the one who vanished out at Los Pináculos. My son, not yours. And then she scratched Lisa’s face. She just reached out and clawed at her with her nails. Jaz sprang up and pushed the woman, who staggered back and sprawled on the ground. Then he slammed the door shut and stood with his back against it. His eyes were filled with tears. She remembered that very distinctly, the tears. What the hell’s going on, he asked. As if it were her fault. When she touched her face, the tips of her fingers came away bloody.

The woman hammered on the door, shouting in Spanish. I’ve never seen her before, said Lisa. Jaz nodded. The woman hung around outside until the police came and took her away in a patrol car. They said they expected such things — a side effect of the media exposure. Lisa wanted to know if it was true. Had the woman’s son really disappeared? She wished the two of them could sit down quietly together and drink coffee and talk.

I like your earrings.

Thanks.

So is that his picture? He’s a beautiful boy.

In the parking lot, she could hear the muffled sound of the jukebox. The air smelled of something dry and bitter. One by one his friends came out from their hiding places, hands jammed in the pockets of their baggy jeans. They’d seen the whole thing. They’d seen her getting fucked against a truck. For a moment the boy looked at her, then back at them. He grinned and lit a cigarette. She pulled on her panties, picked up her shorts out of the dirt. Step aside, she told him. And he did. His friends made no move to follow. She walked away, zipping her shorts. Her rubber sandals made soft little thwacks against her heels.

Q. And how about your relationship? How’s it holding up under the strain? You’ve been dealing with this in the spotlight and there’s been a lot of speculation, which must be hurtful.

She couldn’t pretend. She’d wanted it to happen. And while it was happening it felt good. She’d enjoyed fucking a total stranger. She’d enjoyed it and afterward she was punished. There were things on the Internet. Things that had reduced her. The thickset man screaming insults into his webcam. Things that had

The 1 pic of Raj holding a dinosaur in his hand, and the one where Raj is wearing his blue shirt being held by his grandma as they show him the cake, I believe are two distinctly different Raj, they can’t both be 3 yrs old!

yes a lot of chromosone abnormalities IS caused by interbreeding, along the generations. Thats why I believe, that we are seeing so much of these complaints unheard of 50 years ago b4 miscengation. But u gotta remember — lot of babies with genetic probs wd have died at birth or shortly after in those days, and no 1 knew what had wrong. Same with most cancers and MS — people simply dint realize it what was wrong, and never went to doctors but

i some how dont buy their bullshit story, which parents in thier right mind would BRING A DANGEROUS SICKLY ill child to a remote desert

@TruFree200!! Thx for this extra background on the Matharus!! Really appreciate it. We need more enlightened citizens such as yourself to help transcend the masses above the filthy propaganda spun by the Jew York Media

Everybody! Please notice the way they are both laughing at 1.25 when they think the cameras are off!! A clear sign the two are remorseless and lying!!!

Each time she woke up, there was a moment before she remembered. Then the helmet was lowered over her head. She tried to stay alive inside it, to remember there’d been a time before, but it took all her strength. She had nothing left for them, the reporters, the TV anchors, the strangers who’d begun to blog and tweet and post comments about her family. One day she found she’d forgotten the face Raj made when he liked something. The more she tried to call it to mind, the worse it got. She listed things that gave him pleasure—raw carrot, trucks, his plastic dinosaurs, empty cardboard boxes—and tried to picture him with them, but something had gotten muddled up, and she couldn’t form a clear image in her mind. Her son was receding, slipping away. She began to panic. What if it was a sign? Was this what happened when someone died? Or worse, a precondition for death: Was he slipping away because she’d stopped imagining him properly? If he died now it would be her fault. It was all her fault anyway, her punishment. Jaz found her on the floor of that hotel bathroom. He thought she’d taken an overdose and started yelling into the phone. She couldn’t find the words to tell him what had really happened, just couldn’t make the shapes with her mouth. I don’t want him to die, she whispered. Jaz couldn’t hear. She was disappointed. She thought he would be able to hear. The paramedics shone a little flashlight in her eye. They asked questions. She told them: I don’t want him to die. It seemed to be the only important thing to say. She didn’t want Raj to die and God shouldn’t think she did.

By then he’d been gone three weeks.

Price tried to tell her things. You’re holding it together real well, he said. Too well, in a way. People are confused. Now I know you’re a classy lady. You got poise. But you’re selling yourself short. You’re not showing them the real you.

How did a person do that? How did you show them the real you? She’d tried so hard, reading out the talking points, looking at the camera lens when they made that sign, the two fingers pointing to their eyes. She’d tried to stare straight through the lens into the world, into the heart of the man who had her son. Bring Raj back. If you have any information, phone this number. Complete anonymity. All we want is our son. But the viewers didn’t seem to like her. They didn’t like her clipped voice, her thin-lipped mouth. They preferred Jaz, who could say the words they expected in the tone they expected, words like these last days have been the most harrowing of our lives and we’d like to thank the police and the public for all the support we’ve received in this difficult time. Jaz seemed to be able to sleep. She started to wonder if he was really feeling it, really missing Raj in the way she was.

Then there was the confusing business about the rock star, Nick Capaldi. She’d never heard of him or his band. On TV he looked like those boys you saw cycling up and down Bedford, scrawny and bearded, their pumping legs sausage-skinned in tight jeans. Jaz swore he’d had no idea Capaldi was so famous. He’d found him asleep on one of the loungers by the pool and thought he was a homeless person. Raj had run inside his room. She couldn’t understand. There was nothing about this man that she could connect with her child. He was feral, faintly repulsive. Jaz said he was pretty sure he was on drugs.

They showed video of a concert, this Capaldi wrapped around a mike stand in a forest of outstretched camera phones. It was a surreal experience, he said to the interviewer. I was out there just trying to think, you know? Commune? Like, with the desert? I was trying to get away from stuff and somehow I just got more involved.

The local police had held him overnight. Then a whole phalanx of lawyers had arrived from L.A. and the cops realized they’d made a big mistake. The Internet went crazy. No one seemed to think it was a coincidence. There had to be a reason. Sent by Jesus, the devil, the banks. He was back in England now, with his own TV special, saying how harrowing he’d found his detention, how the not knowing had been the hardest part. Raj had hugged him, held his hand. She stared into his blank eyes and saw nothing human in them at all.

The public would find that ironic. They liked Capaldi. It was her they had trouble with.

For the first few weeks they’d tried to find a label for her. The suffering mother, holding up with dignity in this difficult time. The change came without warning, a sudden reversal of polarity that took her completely by surprise. She said something sarcastic to a journalist, a woman with pearl earrings and frozen blond hair. This woman seemed to think Lisa should cry for her, to fit in with the images of Raj she wanted to show on her local news program, the scanned family photos, the video from his birthday party cut to a sentimental pop song. She asked questions, digging hungrily, scrabbling away like a dog. Lisa wanted to know why she thought she deserved to watch her break down. I don’t even know you, she said. The woman looked at her with open hostility. Mrs. Matharu, she asked, don’t you think you bear some responsibility for what happened to your son?

After that they shouted at each other. How dare you. You took him out there. Unprofessional. Irresponsible. Inadequate supervision. All on camera.

The clip went viral.

The logic of the story demanded something new. A twist. LISA MATHARU SHOWS HER TRUE COLORS!!! Never rise to the bait, said Price. You might think it’s intrusive, but you got to make it work for you. You got to keep bringing it back to your agenda.

Someone’s kidnapped our son, she reminded him. He’s not an agenda, he’s our son.

Blowing out candles. By a swimming pool. Swinging on a swing.

There was something sinister about it. About what they were doing to him. They were making him a little saint. Every day he became less real. Her suspicion grew that it was only her own effort of will that was keeping him alive. She was the anchor stopping him from drifting across the border into death. That was when she stopped speaking. No one was really listening to her anyway. She focused on trying to remember what he was actually like, particularly in the bad times, two, three hours into a tantrum, when she hadn’t slept and his animal screaming began to sound like the cawing of a crow. The times she’d change his diaper, wondering if he’d still be shitting his pants at ten, at fourteen.

well I hope so, and whoever did this shd be brought to justice. I still don t believe it was Jaz — as for Lisa, I dont trust them. Also Lisa had said that Raj was impossible. Btw did u read anything about Raj having learning difficulities/asperger s syndrome. In the photo of him holding the tennis balls he looks def asperger

NickyLUVLUVLUV if you love Nicky C and see all these comments saying crap like “he took that kid” he is evil a vampire etc. u need to fight back he is an amazing artist and these ppl are pathetic with nothing better in thr life. They never give reason for their sick suspicious cuz they know nothing about music. Labels are misleading

You believe that Raj is autistic, when I believe it’s another Vatican Bullshit to make it look like children get their father’s and grandfather’s diseases, as in their sins are passed on down to their children to the 9th generation, but really, the sins of the father’s is autism, which is a child born of incest from father to daughter, cystic fibrosis is brother and sister, these are the sin’s of the father’s!

If you’re so delusional, you’d probably kill anyone that speaks up of the fakery of the Matharu’s, and cover it up like the Matharu’s covered up Raj’s murder! You should be ashamed of yourself!!!!!!!

One day teh bitch will be in PRISON where she is belongs, killing her ownly child and buried the body in the dessert helped by drug addicts

Take a picture of Raj’s eye, put it in photoshop, take out the color and you get the Black Sun, known as Sonnenrad SUN WHEEL, the image taken from Raj’s retinal scan image in his medical records

This couple are frauds and their campaign to find dear Raj is also a fraud. They’re trying to portray the FBI as incompetent to cover up their blood guilt. If you don’t expose them, or get them to expose themselves, they’ll hide until the time come’s when there truth is for all to see

I don’t think they will, the only thing that will reveal the truth about Raj RITUAL SATANIST MURDER is when there is evidence against them, then they’ll try to hide out on some distent island somehwere with all the money they’ve scammed off the public till they die from their greed

How they hated her.

A month passed. She felt trapped in Riverside. She felt trapped by the hotel. By the shiny curtains and the smell of the carpets and the voice of the Asian man who answered the phone when you called room service. Jaz asked, gently, if she wanted to go home. Maybe it would be easier. Not without Raj, she told him. He didn’t push. Several times he flew back to New York. There was some situation at work, but he didn’t want to talk about it. She watched TV and took her pills and waited for the police to call, but they came up with nothing, no leads, no credible sightings. They’d been over the sequence of events again and again, and neither she nor Jaz could remember anything useful. Jaz found some site on the Net and talked it over with Price and her dad, some conference between men to which she wasn’t invited, and one overcast morning they were driven to Pasadena, to a suite of treatment rooms above a Whole Foods where a shaven-headed guy with a ski tan and a lemon-yellow polo shirt spoke for ten minutes about what he called forensic investigative memory-enhancement techniques — a speech that sounded like it had been delivered many times, usually with a PowerPoint presentation. Lisa stared at a collection of cycling trophies that occupied a shelf behind his desk. When he twirled shut the venetian blinds and asked her to sit back on a lounger and breathe regularly, she thought he was going to ask her to focus on one of the shiny metal figures, but he didn’t. Nor did he use a pocket watch, or ask her to look into his eyes, but spoke in a soft lulling voice, about beaches and relaxation and her body being heavy, putting the moves, putting the moves.… After half an hour of free association and word games, she couldn’t remember anything useful, and he showed her out to the waiting room, where she took a seat and flicked through six-month-old fashion magazines without seeing the pictures, or anything very much at all, just listening to the quick tiny sound of the pages turning over, liking it for its repetitiousness, its predictability. This is what happens when you turn a magazine page. The place was warm and quiet and the receptionist didn’t stare or make sympathetic faces, just ignored her and took calls and typed on her keyboard. She felt peaceful sitting there on the couch next to the rubber plant, peaceful for the first time in weeks, and, since she was without expectation, free of any thought or stimulus but the swish-swish of turning pages, it was jarring when Jaz and the hypnotherapist came out of the treatment room with their phones in their hands, gesturing and talking excitedly. When Jaz hugged her, she couldn’t understand what it signified, thinking that through some scientific voodoo they now knew where Raj was. She grinned and hugged him back and when he told her what he’d remembered, it seemed so small and pathetic that she pushed him away. A second car. There’d been a second car parked beside theirs, which hadn’t been there when they started walking up the path to the rocks. Under hypnosis Jaz had remembered looking back and seeing the car roof, a square of glinting metal that he thought was white or silver — a light color certainly — and somehow this absurdly small thing was enough to infuse him with hope and fill his eyes with tears.

It was a twist for Price, and the media were given the new tidbit, and the public was asked again if it had any information and the police liaison assured Lisa that in some office somewhere trained people were looking through hours of CCTV footage from toll booths and gas stations. Of course, it came to nothing. The following week they were right back where they’d been before.

Jaz said he wanted to go home to New York. They could fly out to California if there were developments. If, she asked. What did he mean, “if”? He was angry. Why did she insist on twisting everything? Did she think she was the only one who cared? She told him she was going to stay. He said it wasn’t a good idea. Who’d look after her? Her mom and dad were back in Phoenix. If she wanted to be closer, why didn’t she stay with them? He seemed to want to get rid of her. It was as if they were on twin moving walkways, separated by a partition. Moving along side by side, unable to touch.

Well actually Sally we don’t speak to each other much. Though I’ve never told him, he’s not stupid. He knows something happened. Often I think — I have all the time in the world to think, since, as I believe I told your viewers, I suffer from insomnia and even with the cocktail of drugs I take every day I often find myself alone in the dark with hours of solitude to kill, and I kill them by thinking about my broken relationship with my husband — yes, I think he knows the shape of what I did, and because he knows I suspect that even if our son is given back to us, that miracle probably won’t be enough to hold us together.

The lights were making her sweat. She could feel her dress clinging to her back, a pool collecting between her breasts. Price said the interview was to “press reset on her public image.” She wondered if the public still cared. The Matharus were an old story now. They wouldn’t be renewed for another season. Her face itched under the makeup and she wondered if she was going red. Her body rebelled against her a lot these days. Hot flushes, rashes, breakouts. At quiet moments, she could feel herself trembling. Her hands were folded in her lap and they were quivering now, as if they had an independent life, as if they were birds about to take off into the hot studio air and fly away. Jaz was saying words, sticking to the talking points. How was he able to do that? She imagined her hands, panicking birds, beating themselves against the lighting rig, searching for an exit.

She did sleep sometimes, stretched out on her back like a corpse wearing a mask and earplugs, fathoms deep under a sea of sleeping pills. Sometimes she had confused dreams about the rocks, and about a dog-headed man, neither threatening nor friendly, who was holding Raj’s hand. She would be playing with Raj in the dust, the three spires outlined in the darkness, because it was always night in these dreams. She’d be trying to make him use the potty, doing all the things the books said you had to do — showing strong encouragement, praising, never punishing — and she would turn to the dog-headed man and say this is a very stressful time

this is a very stressful time

and the dog-headed man would scoop up Raj and for a moment he would stand there, looking at her with his unknowable black eyes and then he would turn and run away.

Q. New York is sympathetic to you, but elsewhere people have been less understanding. How do you feel about the image of you as rich city slickers who got into trouble?

She was walking away across the parking lot, her rubber sandals flicking against her heels, and she could feel semen slick on her thighs and she realized she was drunk, really drunk. Suddenly, she was dazzled by headlights, raking her like gunfire as a car swept past, then reversed, the window winding down.

“You OK, honey?”

It took her a moment to recognize the driver as the woman from the motel. She looked behind her and saw the men from the bar, hands in pockets, fanned out in a ragged line. Waiting.

The woman leaned over and pushed open the passenger door.

“You better get in. You ain’t got a bag or nothing? Nothing at all?”

Then there was the road, rising up in the headlights, the smell of perfume and cigarettes, the radio playing mournful country music, fading in and out of static. They didn’t talk much.

“Call me Dawn,” said the woman. “That’s not such a good place for you to go drinking.”

She asked where they were going.

“Not far. To see a friend of mine. After that I’ll take you home.”

“I don’t want to go home.”

They turned off the main road onto a track and stopped outside a house shaped like a dome. A fairy-tale house. The front door wasn’t locked. She remembered that distinctly. The unlocked door. Dawn called out as they stepped over the threshold and the woman came down and together they held her under her arms and lifted her up because her legs wouldn’t move and inside it smelled of woodsmoke and there were baskets and clay jars and Indian rugs. It felt good to lie down.

They put a blanket over her.

Q. We’re seeing a new side of you. A very emotional side. Is this the real Lisa Matharu?

…

Q. What do you think of the theory that a wild animal, possibly a coyote, could have taken your child?