Hari Kunzru - Gods Without Men

Things seemed to slide from there. The local TV stations were giving a lot of airtime to Raj’s abduction. At first the tone was sympathetic, but by the end of the second week they seemed to be hunting for new things to say. The commentators were bored, punchy; they stopped dispensing clichés about how “unimaginable” they found the family’s “plight” and began to dissect the way they behaved at press conferences. They’re kind of a cold couple. Very aloof. Very New York . One morning they were propped up in bed, channel surfing. On the local breakfast show, two women in pantsuits — the presenter and a guest identified as a psychologist — sat on a couch and aired their opinions. As they watched, the pair began to speculate about whether he and Lisa had killed Raj themselves. “I don’t know what it is about that woman,” said one, “but I don’t care for it. She seems, you know, not quite normal. A normal mother would show some emotion.”

An hour later Lisa had a full-blown panic attack. She was rigid, gasping for breath. He tried to rise and fall with her, but she wouldn’t come down. Breathe, he said. Breathe in and out. He tried to say them, the words you were supposed to say. They had no effect. He kept saying the words. It was no good. In the end he dialed the front desk. Help, he said. For some reason he was whispering. Just come and help, OK? Because I can’t help her.

The hotel doctor filled her so full of sedatives that in the middle of the night he thought her heart had stopped. She was too still. He fumbled for the light switch, freaking out because his wife was lying dead next to him and he couldn’t find the fucking switch. This was his fault, this on top of everything else. They’d wanted to take her to a hospital and he’d said no. She was dead because he hadn’t let them take her to the hospital. He shook her violently. She turned over and groaned. After that he couldn’t get back to sleep. Slowly, the sliver of sky visible through the blinds turned from black to gray.

The next day he screamed at Price. What the hell are you doing? My wife shouldn’t have to hear that shit. It’s defamation. It’s your job to protect us. Price told him it wasn’t so easy. He didn’t speak out of malice, but Jaz and Lisa hadn’t been helping themselves. Problem was, they weren’t likable characters. They came off — not to him, mind you, but to some folks — as snobs. You couldn’t put all the blame on the media. They were just going with the story the Matharu family had been offering them. He fished in his jacket pocket and produced a page torn out of a magazine, a feature written by an ex — film producer who’d taken to following high-profile trials and investigations. They are , the man wrote, like a plaster-of-paris couple, something that can be painted to look exactly like life .

“Buddy,” he said, “we got to change the story. First of all, you need to get out, show your human side. You go to church?”

“I’m not a Christian.”

“Not practicing?”

“Mr. Price, just go do your job. Tell them we’re not snobs or whatever they need to hear to get this bullshit to stop. Everyone, including you, seems to be forgetting about our son. Raj, his name is. Remember him? The little boy who went missing? He’s the story. The only story.”

“Sir, this is me right here, doing my job. I’m telling you, go to church. You’ll get the right result.”

“I’m a Sikh, Mr. Price. And my wife’s a Jew. You probably don’t know what a Sikh is, but surely you know about the Jews. The ones who killed Jesus?”

“There’s no need for that tone.”

“Man, I thought my people were ignorant. You really are a fucking hick.”

The insult hung in the air. Jaz shrugged. “I can’t deal with your crap anymore. You don’t understand a thing about me or my family. You’re fired. Now get out of here before you drive me completely insane.”

Price balled his fists, then picked up his briefcase and left, muttering something about a lawsuit. Jaz followed him into the corridor, shouting after him to bring it on. Price called him an elitist bastard, told him he “wasn’t surprised folks felt the way they did.” He stalked off down the hall, double doors flapping behind him.

The next morning, Jaz called Louis to talk about the clinic. Lisa was sitting up in bed, groggily watching him. Hunched furtively over the phone, he felt like he was selling her out to the Gestapo.

“I don’t know, Louis. Maybe it’s the best thing. At least she could get some rest.”

Lisa’s voice was freighted with suspicion. “You’re talking about me.”

“In a minute, honey.”

He should have taken it outside. But she’d been asleep. And he hated going outside. The hotel wanted them to leave, because of the disruption they were causing other guests. People had been jostled in the lobby. There were reports of damage done to cars in the parking lot.

Louis put Patty on the line.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” she said. “Because I sure don’t. You know your problem, Jaz? You say one thing, then do another. You were all ‘Oh I can take care of her.’ Now you find it’s too much trouble so you’re putting her in a clinic? Just throwing my daughter in a clinic. Unbelievable.”

She wasn’t interested in hearing that it had been Louis’s idea. She thought Jaz was showing a “dark side” of himself. The answer was obvious. Lisa should be back at home with them. Jaz didn’t have the strength to take offense. He drove Lisa to Phoenix. While she arranged her things in the guest room, he stood up in the kitchen and drank an awkward coffee with Patty and Louis.

“Well, then,” said Louis. “Bon voyage.” Like he was sending him off on a journey.

Jaz sat outside in the car for a few minutes, his mind blank. Then he started the engine and headed for the airport.

Going home to New York probably made things worse. Fleeing, one newspaper called it, running the story beneath a long-lens photograph of him walking through arrivals at LaGuardia. Dark glasses, wheelie case. An image of well-heeled callousness. Suddenly #matharus was a trending topic. The Internet was calling him a murderer. Everyone on earth seemed to have an opinion. He knew he should shut it all off — the TV, the Net, the constant babble of voices. But somehow he couldn’t. He wanted to know what the world thought of him, to look it in the face. He read the articles, the blog posts, watched the webcammed talking heads, immersing himself in the appalling churn of rumor like a yogi standing in a freezing river. It seemed he and Lisa were now the worst people in America. Someone found his e-mail address and sent obscene taunts, describing all the things that would happen to him when the public found out “the truth.” A journalist called his unlisted cell number and asked him point-blank if he’d killed Raj.

“My son is missing,” he told the man flatly. “I need help finding him.

That’s all.”

Should he have been angry? He couldn’t feel anything. Perhaps he was taking too many pills. Two minutes after the call and he couldn’t even remember what the guy’s voice sounded like.

Late at night he watched movies on his laptop, the kind of romantic comedies he usually saw only on planes. He tried to make his life as much like plane travel as possible. He slept in an armchair he’d dragged into Raj’s room, wearing an eye mask and a pair of bulky noise-canceling headphones. It was like staging his own extraordinary rendition, grabbing himself out of one time and place, hoping to land in another. Emotional teleportation.

Lisa called, crying over something she’d seen on Facebook. He was annoyed. Louis had promised to stop her from looking at it. “Why did you go online?” he asked her. “You knew what you’d see.”