Gone Bitch (7 page)

A couple hours later, I was on Go’s couch with Go watching breaking news coverage of “Nick Dunne’s Fetish Crime!” in which Nick Dunne took a shit on an
Idiotic Amy
book just days after murdering his wife.

“This doesn’t look particularly good,” said Go.

“Actually, I think it humanizes me,” I said.

“
Nick.
You need to start working on your image. There’s potential jurors out there watching this.”

Go was right. I’d been taking a beating in the press lately. At least they hadn’t found out that I’d been cheating on my wife with one of my students. Or that I’d briefly been in Al Qaeda.

My disposable phone buzzed. Andie was trying to reach me again. Andie was the student I’d been fucking, and I’d bought the disposable to communicate with her in secret.

When I checked the phone, I saw that Andie had posted a new Tweet 15 seconds ago. It was a selfie of her standing outside Go’s front door in lingerie, with the caption, “Heading inside to fuck my teacher Mr. Dunne!”

And then there was a knock at the door.

AMY ELLIOTT DUNNE: April 28, 2011

Today I was nosing through Nick’s computer looking at all his personal files and email, which I do twice a day. And I found a book proposal.

Married to a Bitch Who’s 15 Pounds Overweight
will especially resonate with Gen X males, but will also appeal to any male who’s married to a woman who’s a bitch or 15 pounds overweight.

In
Married to a Bitch Who’s 15 Pounds Overweight
, I will detail:

–My wife being a bitch

–My wife being 15 pounds overweight

–How terrible my life is being married to a bitch who’s 15 pounds overweight

There was more to the proposal, but I didn’t have time to read it because I had to go to the blood plasma donation place with Nick’s mom and her friends. I didn’t actually give any plasma. Instead, I intentionally fainted right before I was supposed to give plasma, because “I get freaked out by blood.” I therefore got all the credit of going to donate plasma without actually having to do it.

Idiotic Amy? More like Idiotic Everyone Who Actually Gives Plasma.

NICK DUNNE: Four Days Gone

Fortunately Go hadn’t heard the knocking on the door because she’d gone to wash up and get ready for bed. Once she was safely in her bedroom, I let Andie in.

“Hi Mr. Dunne!” Andie said. “Like my outfit?” I noticed she’d cut out the part of the lingerie that would normally be covering her boobs.

“You need to leave,” I said. “And you also need to delete that Tweet immediately.”

She looked at her phone. “No use now,” she said. “It’s already been retweeted 7,000 times.”

Hooking up with Andie had been easier to accomplish than I thought it would be. When I first started teaching at the community college, I formulated a strategy: I’d give all the hot girls Ds to see if any of them would bite and ask to “do something for extra credit.” It was a genius plan, because since it was a community college a lot of the girls were on financial aid, which requires them to maintain a B average. So if girls had sex with you to raise their grade, they’d essentially be paid to do so. But
you
didn’t have to pay anything. It was like state-subsidized free prostitution.

The first time we had sex was when Andie came to my office hours. Guys: if you teach or TA, and a girl comes to your office hours, she wants to hook up. If a girl actually cared about the material and had done the reading, she’d be so far ahead of rest of the students that she’s not gonna bother talking to you. And the girls who don’t care about the material certainly aren’t gonna spend their free time with you discussing the class. So if a girl comes to office hours, she wants to hook up.

Whenever I’d tell one of my friends about Andie, they’d always ask, “How was the sex?” This is the stupidest question ever. It was great, of course. Because it was
sex with a college girl
. Guys who claim they had sex with a college girl and it wasn’t that great are just making themselves feel better because they couldn’t keep the girl interested and now she won’t fuck them anymore.

I told Andie again that she needed to leave Go’s, but she blackmailed me by taking off her clothes, which forced me to hook up with her. She tasted like butterscotch. But that might’ve been because I had a butterscotch sundae right before she came over.

Finally, I managed to get her out of the house. As soon as she left, Go came out of her bedroom, looking really pissed.

“Nicoflavius Dunne,” she said, using my real first name, which she only used when she was really mad at me. “Tonight, you have crossed a line. Because from this night forward, you’re
a man who cheats on his sister
. You can’t ever undo that.” And then she stomped back to her room and slammed the door.

Awk-warrrrd.

I couldn't sleep, so I turned on the TV and was greeted by the face of Dr. Banjay Rupta, host of
Dr. Rupta’s Office
, a show on one of the big cable news networks. Dr. Rupta was an optometrist by trade, and he’d first started out on the network reporting on eye medicine. But because he was a doctor, the network gradually started using him as an “expert” on all kinds of medical matters, and then gave him his own show where he held forth authoritatively on any topic whatsoever. Tonight on
Dr. Rupta’s Office
, Dr. Rupta was focusing on one topic only: Where’s Amy?

After a few minutes of discussion about the crime scene, the show shifted its focus to me. They began playing a montage of recent remarks I’d made in front of the cameras:

“These past few days have been the best days of my life.”

“Honey, if you’re out there...please don’t come back.”

“Which do you think I should use, Tinder or OkCupid?”

They finished by showing the clip of me drawing an overweight body on Amy’s head on the “Find Amy” poster. I laughed again when I saw the clip. It really never gets old.

The special guest during the segment was one of the women whose number I’d gotten during the search. I’d called her the next night, and she’d come over to the Days Inn and given me an hj behind the ice machine.

DR. RUPTA:  Can you describe what Nick Dunne’s demeanor was on the night you hung out with him?

WOMAN:  Uh, demeanor?

DR. RUPTA:  Yes, describe it for us.

WOMAN:  Um...hard?

The rest of the interview was similarly enlightening. So enlightening that it put me to sleep, which was a good thing, because the next day I had to get up early to go visit Desi Collings.

Desi lived in a McMansion in a tony St. Louis suburb. I thought the house might be creepy inside, but when I walked in I was pleasantly surprised to see the walls covered with lovely photos of Desi and his wife, as well as pictures of Desi’s two children, a son and daughter. But then when I looked at the photos more closely, I realized they were all photos of Desi and Amy, from grade school all the way up until now.

Desi was well dressed and good-looking — clearly the kind of guy who thinks being well dressed and good looking will get a girl to hook up with you eventually if you spend enough time in the friend zone.

“Nice to meet you, Nick,” said Desi. “Amy’s told me so much about you.”

Amy had only been able to tell him “so much” about me because they’d hung out “so much.” It saddened me to think of this guy wasting his entire life in the friend zone. I just wanted to shake him into sanity and tell him how things worked with guys and girls. But I had to stay on topic.

“Great to meet you as well,” I said. “So I came here because I had to ask you a couple very important questions. This is completely confidential, by the way. I’ll never tell another soul, I swear on my life. I just need to know: did you kill Amy?”

“What? Of course not!”

“Did you kidnap Amy?”

“No!”

“Did you do anything to Amy that would make it so that I never have to see her again?”

“Nope.”

“Shit,” I said. “Well thanks for your time.” I went to leave, but Desi stopped me.

“Hey Nick, if you do find Amy, could you give her a message for me?”

“Sure.”

“Tell her that if she wants someone to accompany her for some shoe shopping or brunch, I’m totally down.”

AMY ELLIOTT DUNNE: June 26, 2011

After much deliberation, I’ve decided to kill myself.

Now hold on, before you go start calling the suicide prevention hotline, just let me explain. I’m not
really
gonna kill myself. I’m just gonna disappear and make it look like Nick killed me. It’s gonna be so fun! I get to leave Missouri, and Nick gets to go to jail.

What, this seems cruel to you? Unbelievably mean? Wouldn’t I have to be a completely awful person to even think such a thing?

Well I’ve got a confession to make: I am completely awful. If you thought otherwise, that’s because you, like pretty much the entire male population, is under the delusion that the Hot And Not Completely Awful Girl exists.

Every guy wants the Hot And Not Completely Awful Girl. They think it’s actually possible that a girl can be hot and not be completely awful. So hot girls like me are forced into living a charade, into pretending we’re not completely awful just to get a guy. I initially didn’t play along. The idea of being a Hot And Not Completely Awful Girl offended me. I’d see men—friends, co-workers, strangers—dating these hot girls that weren’t being completely awful, and I’d want to grab these men by their lapels and say, “The bitch isn’t making your life a miserable hell yet because she’s
pretending
!” But they never would’ve listened.

For years, I waited and waited for guys to wise up, because I didn’t want to live this lie of not being completely awful just to have a boyfriend. But it never happened. So when it finally became apparent that I had to have a boyfriend to win the hot girl status game, the charade began. My first few years with Nick, I wasn’t completely awful. I’d have sex with him on occasion. I’d decide what restaurant to go to or what movie to see once in a while without making it into a giant fight. I’d periodically respect our budget and not make him buy me things we couldn’t afford. But this was just Hot And Not Completely Awful Girl bullshit.

It had to stop eventually. There was a Real Amy in there, and I knew that one day Real Amy would need to come back out.

That day was today.

Ok, gotta run! Need to start framing a murder!

NICK DUNNE: Five Days Gone

When I checked my messages after leaving Desi’s, there was one from Gilpin: “Hi Nick, we need to ask you some more questions. Meet you at your house at four, okay?” I could tell it was serious, because it was the first time Gilpin hadn’t said “pretty pretty pretty pleeeeeease” when asking me to meet. (“Nick, I’m sooooo sorry to bother you, but is there annnnny chance you could meet us for breakfast so we could ask you a few things? Pretty pretty pretty pleeeeeease?”)

I headed back to the house and sat down with Gilpin and Boney in the living room. The summer motorboat show—a parade of powerful large boats speeding down the river—was taking place just outside, and because of the constant motorboat noise we had to all sit on the same couch to even hear each other. Also, every minute or so a wake from a passing boat tossed the house up and down several feet.

“Look Nick,” said Boney, “the thing is, besides you, we’re kinda running out of suspects.”

“Well what about this guy?” I said, pointing at Gilpin. “Older creepy dude, owns a gun, probably hasn’t hooked up with many hot girls, if any, and thus has a deep resentment toward any reasonably attractive girl for perceived injustices.” I looked at Gilpin. “Am I right?”

“No comment,” he said.

Then I pointed at Boney. “And let’s not forget about his lesbian partner, full of rage at Amy Elliott, the straight girl she couldn’t turn gay,” I said.

“I’m not a lesbian,” Boney said.

“Sure, and you’re not a murderer, either.”

“Nick, there’s no need to be defensive,” Gilpin said. “We want to clear you of this. We just need some more information.”

“I’ll give you whatever you need,” I said.

“Let’s start with the morning your wife went missing,” he said.

“Right, the morning when I was at the beach and at a karate lesson and hang gliding and shooting a major motion picture with Keanu Reeves.”

Gilpin sighed. “You still can’t recall anyone seeing you at any of these places? It would really help if we could cross this one teeny-weeny thing off our list. You know, the itsy-bitsy teeny-tiny thing about you doing something else that morning besides killing your wife.”

“I really wish I could tell you there’s someone who saw me, but I’m not going to lie to you. I’m just not the kind of person who lies. Oh by the way, Keanu says hi.”

Gilpin and Boney gave each other a look. They were clearly worried that I was outmaneuvering them.

“Oh and speaking of Keanu Reeves,” I said, “how about checking out that guy? Big star, thinks he’s above the law, maybe was on some coke-fueled rampage...”