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Adrienne called me long distance. I keep my offices in New York, and she lives in New Mexico. It took me a moment to place her name.
    “It’s happened again. And I think they’re after my boy, my Cal.”
    I wracked my brain. The boy, as I recalled, was living in New England with relatives. We talked a while longer, and I decided I would make another trip to New Mexico, this time to the small town of Lott, where Adrienne lived.
    I pulled into her driveway late in the afternoon. Her trailer was small and not particularly neat. She lived in it alone, one of the rooms set aside for the boy to stay in, if he ever were to come home. With some pride, she told me she’d been clean since the last time we talked. I congratulated her.
    “I’d like to hypnotize you,” I said.
    Her expression darkened. Hypnosis isn’t like the movies make it out to be. It’s perfectly safe, a way to dig deeper into a person’s subconscious. It cannot correct for incorrect memories, nor can a person be made to do something they wouldn’t be willing to do under ordinary circumstances. It’s commonly used for phobias, for weight loss, all manner of things that people need a little help in doing. It also lets you remember. That first session, we established that Adrienne’s abductions had been ongoing since she was nine years old. She and her father lived in a trailer a lot like the one she now owns, on the far side of town in a trailer park. She told me what fun it used to be to play with the other kids. “The rest of the town called us white trash, but when you’re seven or so, you don’t know yet that you’re supposed to be ashamed of it. You’re tickled you got all these kids to pal around with. You have pity on those kids with the nice houses, all away from everything.” When she was nine, Adrienne stopped playing in her neighborhood, without warning. That was about the time, she told me, that the scars appeared on her leg.
    * * *
    “I don’t know what woke me up,” said Adrienne during our next session, her eyes looking less clear this afternoon than they had before. She told me she was clean, but I also noticed an abundance of alcohol bottles, and a sweet tell-tale scent on her breath. I wasn’t surprised. Abductees, before they can really admit what has happened, use a variety of coping skills, not all of them productive or healthy. She licked her lips and continued. “I woke up and I couldn’t fall back asleep. Dave—a guy I had over—was out like a light next to me. I kind of thrashed around in the hopes that he might wake up and we could do something, but he was out. I was thirsty, so I got up and went to the kitchen, and instead of getting a glass of water, I stared out the window over the sink.”
    Adrienne pointed, and I looked out the window. It overlooked the driveway, a shed, and some desert.
    “The moon was full that night, and it was bright as noon, but all silvery, you know? Is that too much detail? You want more? Less?” She kept looking at the cassette tape recorder I’d set up on her table.
    I assured her it was fine, and encouraged her to continue.
    “I went outside in my bare feet, wearing a pair of boxer shorts and a tank top. It was hot that day, but at night it was nice and cool. That was before we had AC, so inside was still hot from the sun.
    “I don’t know why, but I got in my car and turned it on. I didn’t even realize I’d taken my car keys. I drove really slowly. I was still a little buzzed from partying with Dave, and pulled off at the Olympus Mine. It shut down, like, ten years ago. They keep it gated off ‘cause it’s dangerous, so I parked next to the gate, and walked in, my feet were a mess the next morning, let me tell you.
    “And that’s all I remember.”
    She paused, staring at me.
    “I woke up in bed; car was in the driveway, in the exact spot where I’d parked it. The only reason I knew it wasn’t a dream is that my feet were filthy when I woke up. Dave really