Gone Girl(20)

I like to think I am confident and secure and mature enough to know Nick loves me without him constantly proving it. I don’t need pathetic dancing-monkey scenarios to repeat to my friends, I am content with letting him be himself.

I don’t know why women find that so hard.

When I get home from dinner, my cab pulls up just as Nick is getting out of his own taxi, and he stands in the street with his arms out to me and a huge grin on his face – ‘Baby!’ – and I run and I jump up into his arms and he presses a stubbly cheek against mine.

‘What did you do tonight?’ I ask.

‘Some guys were playing poker after work, so I hung around for a bit. Hope that was okay.’

‘Of course,’ I say. ‘More fun than my night.’

‘Who all showed up?’

‘Oh, Campbell and Insley and their dancing monkeys. Boring. You dodged a bullet. A really lame bullet.’

He squeezes me into him – those strong arms – and hauls me up the stairs. ‘God, I love you,’ he says.

Then comes sex and a stiff drink and a night of sleep in a sweet, exhausted rats’ tangle in our big, soft bed. Poor me.





NICK DUNNE

ONE DAY GONE

I didn’t listen to Go about the booze. I finished half the bottle sitting on her sofa by myself, my eighteenth burst of adrenaline kicking in just when I thought I’d finally go to sleep: My eyes were shutting, I was shifting my pillow, my eyes were closed, and then I saw my wife, blood clotting her blond hair, weeping and blind in pain, scraping herself along our kitchen floor. Calling my name. Nick, Nick, Nick!

I took repeated tugs on the bottle, psyching myself up for sleep, a losing routine. Sleep is like a cat: It only comes to you if you ignore it. I drank more and continued my mantra. Stop thinking, swig, empty your head, swig, now, seriously, empty your head, do it now, swig. You need to be sharp tomorrow, you need to sleep! Swig. I got nothing more than a fussy nap toward dawn, woke up an hour later with a hangover. Not a disabling hangover, but decent. I was tender and dull. Fuggy. Maybe still a little drunk. I stutterwalked to Go’s Subaru, the movement feeling alien, like my legs were on backward. I had temporary ownership of the car; the police had graciously accepted my gently used Jetta for inspection along with my laptop – all just a formality, I was assured. I drove home to get myself some decent clothes.

Three police cruisers sat on my block, our very few neighbors milling around. No Carl, but there was Jan Teverer – the Christian lady – and Mike, the father of the three-year-old IVF triplets – Taylor, Topher, and Talullah. (‘I hate them all, just by name,’ said Amy, a grave judge of anything trendy. When I mentioned that the name Amy was once trendy, my wife said, ‘Nick, you know the story of my name.’ I had no idea what she was talking about.)

Jan nodded from a distance without meeting my eyes, but Mike strode over to me as I got out of my car. ‘I’m so sorry, man, anything I can do, you let me know. Anything. I did the mowing this morning, so at least you don’t needta worry about that.’

Mike and I took turns mowing all the abandoned foreclosed properties in the complex – heavy rains in the spring had turned yards into jungles, which encouraged an influx of raccoons. We had raccoons everywhere, gnawing through our garbage late at night, sneaking into our basements, lounging on our porches like lazy house pets. The mowing didn’t seem to make them go away, but we could at least see them coming now.

‘Thanks, man, thank you,’ I said.

‘Man, my wife, she’s been hysterical since she heard,’ he said. ‘Absolutely hysterical.’

‘I’m so sorry to hear that,’ I said. ‘I gotta—’ I pointed at my door.

‘Just sitting around, crying over pictures of Amy.’

I had no doubt that a thousand Internet photos had popped up overnight, just to feed the pathetic needs of women like Mike’s wife. I had no sympathy for drama queens.

‘Hey, I gotta ask—’ Mike started.

I patted his arm and pointed again at the door, as if I had pressing business. I turned away before he could ask any questions and knocked on the door of my own house.

Officer Velásquez escorted me upstairs, into my own bedroom, into my own closet – past the silvery perfect-square gift box – and let me rifle through my things. It made me tense, selecting clothes in front of this young woman with the long brown braid, this woman who had to be judging me, forming an opinion. I ended up grabbing blindly: The final look was business-casual, slacks and short sleeves, like I was going to a convention. It would make an interesting essay, I thought, picking out appropriate clothes when a loved one goes missing. The greedy, angle-hungry writer in me, impossible to turn off.

I jammed it all into a bag and turned back around, looking at the gift box on the floor. ‘Could I look inside?’ I asked her.

She hesitated, then played it safe. ‘No, I’m sorry, sir. Better not right now.’

The edge of the gift wrapping had been carefully slit. ‘Has somebody looked inside?’

She nodded.

I stepped around Velásquez toward the box. ‘If it’s already been looked at then—’

She stepped in front of me. ‘Sir, I can’t let you do that.’

‘This is ridiculous. It’s for me from my wife—’