The Interviews IV—Saturday

Lansdale Cruise finds her camera, sets it to video, and stuffs it into the pocket of her apron. She rushes to the scene in Gustav’s yard with a quiche in each hand.

When she arrives, she sees that they are naked—Gustav, who is covering his privates with a tea towel; an older woman, who is wrapped in the green plastic tarp that Gustav’s father uses to cover his woodpile during the winter; and Stanzi, who is covered in blankets and is sitting on the grass, staring toward the backyard.

Interview #1 Patricia

Lansdale asks, “Why are you all naked?”

“Are you filming me?”

Lansdale makes her camera nod and says, “Yes.”

The dangerous bush man pushes Lansdale away and says, “Not now.”

Interview #2 The dangerous bush man

“Why did you give us the wrong answers?”

“Turn off the camera,” he says.

She turns it off. The bush man walks away from Patricia, who is getting partially dressed in Gustav’s mother’s clothing. The tray of chocolate chip cookies lies, unscathed, on the macadam outside the garage door.

“How do you know they’re the wrong answers?” he asks.

“Because there were sixteen extra.”

“And?”

“And sixteen extra means you got us the wrong answers.”

“Or you remembered them wrong,” he adds. “You’ve been distracted, haven’t you?”

“I guess.”

“Test week wasn’t ideal,” he says.

“No.”

“So what were you asking me?”

“Nothing, I guess,” she says.

Interview #3 Gustav

“Why are you all naked?”

“We had to make weight,” Gustav answers.

“What’s up with Stanzi?” she asks.

“I think she’s in shock. Or something. I don’t know.”

“Did you call her parents?”

“My dad did. Their message says Gone to bed. TV dinner in freezer. Make sure you turn out the lights.”

“They’re at Chick’s Bar,” Lansdale says.

“Oh,” Gustav says. “I’d better go tell my dad.”

Interview #4 Stanzi

“Stanzi?

“Stanzi?”

Lansdale stares at Stanzi. She waves her hand slowly in front of Stanzi’s face but Stanzi continues to stare forward with glassy eyes. Lansdale puts her video camera on the grass and starts taking Stanzi’s vital signs.

“Stanzi!”

Stanzi doesn’t answer. Her eyes are fixed. Her breathing is shallow.

Lansdale walks back to the group standing around the open garage door.

“She’s in a stupor of some kind,” she says.

Lansdale produces her two quiches.

“Kenneth said you were coming back today. I figured you might be hungry.” She hands Gustav’s to him now that he is fully dressed in a tracksuit. She puts Stanzi’s in her blanket-covered lap and Stanzi doesn’t move. The quiche falls into the dip in her crisscrossed legs. Lansdale leans down to balance the aluminum foil pie dish on Stanzi’s lap, but it won’t balance. She opts for leaving it in the grass in front of Stanzi.

Lansdale walks back to the bush man and tells him, “I’m not cut out to be an interviewer.”

“You’re not great.”

“You set me up to fail.”

“I guess.”

“That’s why you gave me the wrong answers,” she says.

“If you say so,” he says.