Gone Girl: A Novel (37 page)

That whore, he picked that little whore over me. He killed my soul, which should be a crime. Actually, it is a crime. According to me, at least.

I
had to phone Tanner, my brand-new lawyer, mere hours after I’d hired him, and say the words that would make him regret taking my money:
I think my wife is framing me
. I couldn’t see his face, but I could imagine it—the eye roll, the grimace, the weariness of a man who hears nothing but lies for a living.

“Well,” he finally said after a gaping pause, “I’ll be there first thing tomorrow morning, and we will sort this out—everything on the table—and in the meantime, sit tight, okay? Go to sleep and sit tight.”

Go took his advice; she popped two sleeping pills and left me just before eleven, while I literally sat tight, in an angry ball on her couch. Every so often I’d go outside and glare at the woodshed, my hands on my hips, as if it were a predator I could scare off. I’m not sure what I thought I was accomplishing, but I couldn’t stop myself. I could stay seated for five minutes, tops, before I’d have to go back outside and stare.

I had just come back inside when a knock rattled the back door. Fucking Christ. Not quite midnight. Cops would come to the front—right?—and reporters had yet to stake out Go’s (this would change, in a matter of days, hours). I was standing, unnerved, undecided, in the living room when the banging came again, louder, and I cursed under my breath, tried to get myself angry instead of scared.
Deal with it, Dunne
.

I flung open the door. It was Andie. It was goddamn Andie, pretty
as a picture, dressed up for the occasion, still not getting it—that she was going to put my neck right in the noose.

“Right in the noose, Andie.” I yanked her inside, and she stared at my hand on her arm. “You are going to put my neck right in the fucking noose.”

“I came to the back door,” she said. When I stared her down, she didn’t apologize, she steeled herself. I could literally see her features harden. “I needed to see you, Nick. I told you. I told you I had to see you or talk to you every day, and today you disappeared. Straight to voice mail, straight to voice mail, straight to voice mail.”

“If you don’t hear from me, it’s because I can’t talk, Andie. Jesus, I was in New York, getting a lawyer. He’ll be here first thing tomorrow.”

“You got a lawyer. That was what kept you so busy that you couldn’t call me for ten seconds?”

I wanted to smack her. I took a breath. I had to cut things off with Andie. It wasn’t just Tanner’s warning I had in mind. My wife knew me: She knew I’d do almost anything to avoid dealing with confrontation. Amy was depending on me to be stupid, to let the relationship linger—and to ultimately be caught. I had to end it. But I had to do it perfectly.
Make her believe that this was the decent thing
.

“He’s actually given me some important advice,” I began. “Advice I can’t ignore.”

I’d been so sweet and doting just last night, at my mandatory meeting in our pretend fort. I’d made so many promises, trying to calm her down. She wouldn’t see this coming. She wouldn’t take this well.

“Advice? Good. Is it to stop being such an asshole to me?”

I felt the rage rise up; that this was already turning into a high school fight. A thirty-four-year-old man in the middle of the worst night of my life, and I was having a
meet me by the lockers!
squabble with a pissed-off girl. I shook her once, hard, a tiny droplet of spit landing on her lower lip.

“I— You don’t get it, Andie. This isn’t some joke, this is my life.”

“I just … I need you,” she said, looking down at her hands. “I know I keep saying that, but I do. I can’t do it, Nick. I can’t go on like this. I’m falling apart. I’m so scared all the time.”

She
was scared. I pictured the police knocking, and here I was with a girl I’d been fucking the morning my wife went missing. I’d sought her out that day—I had never gone to her apartment since
that first night, but I went right there that morning, because I’d spent hours with my heart pounding behind my ears, trying to get myself to say the words to Amy:
I want a divorce. I am in love with someone else. We have to end. I can’t pretend to love you, I can’t do the anniversary thing—it would actually be more wrong than cheating on you in the first place
. (I know: debatable.) But while I was gathering the guts, Amy had preempted me with her speech about still loving me (lying bitch!), and I lost my nerve. I felt like the ultimate cheat and coward, and—the catch-22—I craved Andie to make me feel better.

But Andie was no longer the antidote to my nerves. Quite the opposite.

The girl was wrapping herself around me even now, oblivious as a weed.

“Look, Andie,” I said, a big exhale, not letting her sit down, keeping her near the door. “You are such a special person to me. You’ve handled all this so amazingly well—”
Make her want to keep you safe
.

“I mean …” Her voice wavered. “I feel so sorry, for Amy. Which is insane. I know I don’t even have a right to feel sad for her, or worried. And on top of feeling sad, I feel so guilty.” She leaned her head against my chest. I retreated, held her at arm’s length so she had to look at me.

“Well, that’s one thing I think we can fix. I think we need to fix,” I said, pulling up Tanner’s exact words.

“We should go to the police,” she said. “I’m your alibi for that morning, we’ll just tell them.”

“You’re my alibi for about an hour that morning,” I said. “No one saw or heard Amy after eleven
P.M
. the night before. The police can say I killed her before I saw you.”

“That’s disgusting.”

I shrugged. I thought, for a second, about telling her about Amy
—my wife is framing me
—and quickly dismissed it. Andie couldn’t play the game on Amy’s level. She’d want to be my teammate, and she’d drag me down. Andie would be a liability going forward. I put my hands on her arms again, relaunched my speech.

“Look, Andie, we are both under an amazing amount of stress and pressure, and a lot of it is brought on by our feelings of guilt. Andie, the thing is, we are good people. We were attracted to each other, I think, because we both have similar values. Of treating people right,
of doing the right thing. And right now we know what we are doing is wrong.”

Her broken, hopeful expression changed—the wet eyes, the gentle touch, they disappeared: a weird flicker, a window shade pulled down, something darker in her face.

“We need to end this, Andie. I think we both know that. It’s so hard, but it’s the decent thing to do. I think it’s the advice we’d give ourselves if we could think straight. As much as I love you, I am still married to Amy. I have to do the right thing.”

“And if she’s found?” She didn’t say
dead or alive
.

“That’s something we can discuss then.”

“Then! And until then, what?”

I shrugged helplessly:
Until then, nothing
.

“What, Nick? I fuck off until then?”

“That’s an ugly choice of words.”

“But that’s what you mean.” She smirked.

“I’m sorry, Andie. I don’t think it’s right for me to be with you right now. It’s dangerous for you, it’s dangerous for me. It doesn’t sit well with my conscience. It’s just how I feel.”

“Yeah? You know how I feel?” Her eyes burst over, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I feel like a dumb college girl that you started fucking because you were bored with your wife and I made it extremely convenient for you. You could go home to Amy and eat dinner with her and play around in your little bar that you bought with her money, and then you could meet me at your dying dad’s house and jack off on my tits because, poor you, your mean wife would never let you do that.”

“Andie, you know that’s not—”

“What a shit you are. What kind of man are you?”

“Andie, please.”
Contain this, Nick
. “I think because you haven’t been able to talk about this stuff, everything has gotten a little bigger in your mind, a little—”

“Fuck you. You think I’m some dumb kid, some pathetic student you can
manage
? I stick by you through all this—this talk about how you might be a
murderer
—and as soon as it’s a little tough for you? No,
no
. You don’t get to talk about conscience and decency and guilt and feel like you are doing the right thing. Do you understand me? Because you are a cheating, cowardly, selfish
shit
.”

She turned away from me, sobbing, sucking in loud gulps of moist
air, and breathing out mewls, and I tried to stop her, I grabbed her by the arm. “Andie, this isn’t how I want to—”

“Hands off me! Hands off me!”

She moved toward the back door, and I could see what would happen, the hatred and embarrassment coming off her like heat, I knew she’d open a bottle of wine, or two, and then she’d tell a friend, or her mother, and it would spread like an infection.

I moved in front of her, barring her way to the door
—Andie, please
—and she reached up to slap me, and I grabbed her arm, just for defense. Our joined arms moved up and down and up and down like crazed dance partners.

“Let me go, Nick, or I swear …”

“Just stay for a minute. Just listen to me.”

“You, let me go!”

She moved her face toward mine like she was going to kiss me. She bit me. I jerked back and she shot out the door.

Y
ou may call me Ozark Amy. I am ensconced in the Hide-A-Way Cabins (has ever there been a more apt name?), and I sit quietly, watching all the levers and latches I put in place do their work.

I have shed myself of Nick, and yet I think about him more than ever. Last night at 10:04
P.M
. my disposable cell phone rang. (That’s right, Nick, you’re not the only one who knows the old “secret cell phone” trick.) It was the alarm company. I didn’t answer, of course, but now I know Nick has made it as far as his dad’s house. Clue 3. I changed the code two weeks before I disappeared and listed my secret cell as the first number to call. I can picture Nick, my clue in hand, entering his dad’s dusty, stale house, fumbling with the alarm code … then the time runs out. Beep beep beeeep! His cell is listed as the backup if I can’t be reached (and I obviously can’t).

So he tripped the alarm, and he talked to someone at the alarm company, and so he’s on record as being in his dad’s house after my disappearance. Which is good for the plan. It’s not foolproof, but it doesn’t have to be foolproof. I’ve already left enough for the police to make a case against Nick: the staged scene, the mopped-up blood, the credit-card bills. All these will be found by even the most incompetent police departments. Noelle will spill my pregnancy news very soon (if she hasn’t already). It is enough, especially once the police discover Able Andie (able to suck cock on command). So all these extras, they’re just bonus fuck-yous. Amusing booby traps. I love that I am a woman with booby traps.

Ellen Abbott
is part of my plan too. The biggest cable crime-news show in the country. I adore Ellen Abbott, I love how protective and maternal she gets about all the missing women on her show, and how rabid-dog vicious she is once she seizes on a suspect, usually the husband. She is America’s voice of female righteousness. Which is why I’d really like her to take on my story. The Public must turn against Nick. It’s as much a part of his punishment as prison, for darling Nicky—who spends so much time worrying about people liking him—to know he is universally hated. And I need Ellen to keep me apprised of the investigation. Have the police found my diary yet? Do they know about Andie? Have they discovered the bumped-up life insurance? This is the hardest part: waiting for stupid people to figure things out.

I flip on the TV in my little room once an hour, eager to see if Ellen has picked up my story. She has to, I can’t see how she could resist. I am pretty, Nick is pretty, and I have the
Amazing Amy
hook. Just before noon, she flares up, promising a special report. I stay tuned, glaring at the TV: Hurry up, Ellen. Or: Hurry up,
Ellen
. We have that in common: We are both people and entities. Amy and
Amy
, Ellen and
Ellen
.

Tampon commercial, detergent commercial, maxipad commercial, Windex commercial. You’d think all women do is clean and bleed.

And finally! There I am! My debut!

I know from the second Ellen shows up, glowering like Elvis, that this is going to be good. A few gorgeous photos of me, a still shot of Nick with his insane
love me!
grin from the first press conference. News: There has been a fruitless multi-site search for “the beautiful young woman with everything going for her.” News: Nick fucked himself already. Taking candid photos with a townie during a search for me. This is clearly what hooked Ellen, because she is
pissed
. There he is, Nick in his sweetie-pie mode, the
I am the beloved of all women
mode, his face pressed against the strange woman’s, as if they’re happy-hour buddies.

What an idiot. I love it.

Ellen Abbott is making much of the fact that our backyard leads right to the Mississippi River. I wonder then if it has been leaked—the search history on Nick’s computer, which I made sure includes a study on the locks and dams of the Mississippi, as well as a
Google search of the words
body float Mississippi River
. Not to put too fine a point on it. It could happen—possibly, unlikely, but there is precedent—that the river might sweep my body all the way to the ocean. I’ve actually felt sad for myself, picturing my slim, naked, pale body, floating just beneath the current, a colony of snails attached to one bare leg, my hair trailing like seaweed until I reach the ocean and drift down down down to the bottom, my waterlogged flesh peeling off in soft streaks, me slowly disappearing into the current like a watercolor until just the bones are left.

But I’m a romantic. In real life, if Nick had killed me, I think he would have just rolled my body into a trash bag and driven me to one of the landfills in the sixty-mile radius. Just dispose of me. He’d have even taken a few items with him—the broken toaster that’s not worth fixing, a pile of old VHS tapes he’s been meaning to toss—to make the trip efficient.