flynn_gillian_gone_girl (1) (858987), страница 21
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I am notokay. I will be okay, but right now I am not okay. I want my husband to put his armsaround me, to console me, to baby me a little bit. Just for a second.Inside the back of the truck, he fusses with the boxes. Nick prides himself on hispacking skills: He is (was) the loader of the dishwasher, the packer of the holiday bags.But by hour three, it is clear that we’ve sold or gifted too many of our belongings. TheU-Haul’s massive cavern is only half full. It gives me my single satisfaction of the day,that hot, mean satisfaction right in the belly, like a nib of mercury. Good, I think. Good.“We can take the bed if you really want to,” Nick says, looking past me down thestreet.
“We have enough room.”“No, you promised it to Wally, Wally should have it,” I say primly.I was wrong. Just say: I was wrong, I’m sorry, let’s take the bed. You should have yourold, comforting bed in this new place. Smile at me and be nice to me. Today, be nice tome.Nick blows out a sigh. “Okay, if that’s what you want. Amy? Is it?” He stands,slightly breathless, leaning on a stack of boxes, the top one with Magic Marker scrawl:AMY CLOTHES WINTER.
“This is the last I’ll hear about the bed, Amy? Because I’moffering right now. I’m happy to pack the bed for you.”“How gracious of you,” I say, just a whi of breath, the way I say most retorts: a puof perfume from a rank atomizer. I am a coward. I don’t like confrontation. I pick up abox and start toward the truck.“What did you say?”I shake my head at him. I don’t want him to see me cry, because it will make himmore angry.Ten minutes later, the stairs are pounding—bang! bang! bang! Nick is dragging oursofa down by himself.I can’t even look behind me as we leave New York, because the truck has no backwindow. In the side mirror, I track the skyline (the receding skyline—isn’t that what theywrite in Victorian novels where the doomed heroine is forced to leave her ancestralhome?), but none of the good buildings—not the Chrysler or the Empire State or theFlatiron, they never appear in that little shining rectangle.My parents dropped by the night before, presented us with the family cuckoo clockthat I’d loved as a child, and the three of us cried and hugged as Nick shu ed his handsin his pockets and promised to take care of me.He promised to take care of me, and yet I feel afraid.
I feel like something is goingwrong, very wrong, and that it will get even worse. I don’t feel like Nick’s wife. I don’tfeel like a person at all: I am something to be loaded and unloaded, like a sofa or acuckoo clock. I am something to be tossed into a junkyard, thrown into the river, ifnecessary. I don’t feel real anymore. I feel like I could disappear.NICK DUNNETHREE DAYS GONEThe police weren’t going to nd Amy unless someone wanted her found. That muchwas clear.
Everything green and brown had been searched: miles of the muddyMississippi River, all the trails and hiking paths, our sad collection of patchy woods. Ifshe were alive, someone would need to return her. If she were dead, nature would haveto give her up. It was a palpable truth, like a sour taste on the tongue tip. I arrived atthe volunteer center and realized everyone else knew this too: There was a listlessness, adefeat, that hung over the place. I wandered aimlessly over to the pastries station andtried to convince myself to eat something.
Danish. I’d come to believe there was no foodmore depressing than Danish, a pastry that seemed stale upon arrival.“I still say it’s the river,” one volunteer was saying to his buddy, both of them pickingthrough the pastries with dirty fingers. “Right behind the guy’s house, what easier way?”“She would have turned up in an eddy by now, a lock, something.”“Not if she’s been cut. Chop o the legs, the arms … the body can shoot all the way tothe Gulf. Tunica, at least.”I turned away before they noticed me.A former teacher of mine, Mr. Coleman, sat at a card table, hunched over the tip-linephone, scribbling down information.
When I caught his eye, he made the cuckoo signal:nger circling his ear, then pointing at the phone. He had greeted me yesterday bysaying, “My granddaughter was killed by a drunk driver, so …” We’d murmured andpatted each other awkwardly.My cell rang, the disposable—I couldn’t gure out where to keep it, so I kept it onme. I’d made a call, and the call was being returned, but I couldn’t take it. I turned thephone o , scanned the room to make sure the Elliotts hadn’t seen me do it. Marybethwas clicking away on her BlackBerry, then holding it at arm’s length so she could readthe text.
When she saw me, she shot over in her tight quick steps, holding the BlackBerryin front of her like a talisman.“How many hours from here is Memphis?” she asked.“Little under five hours, driving. What’s in Memphis?”“Hilary Handy lives in Memphis. Amy’s stalker from high school. How much of acoincidence is that?”I didn’t know what to say: none?“Yeah, Gilpin blew me o too. We can’t authorize the expense for something thathappened twenty-some years ago. Asshole. Guy always treats me like I’m on the verge ofhysteria; he’ll talk to Rand when I’m right there, totally ignore me, like I need myhusband to explain things to little dumb me. Asshole.”“The city’s broke,” I said.
“I’m sure they really don’t have the budget, Marybeth.”“Well, we do. I’m serious, Nick, this girl was o her rocker. And I know she tried tocontact Amy over the years. Amy told me.”“She never told me that.”“What’s it cost to drive there? Fifty bucks? Fine. Will you go? You said you’d go.Please? I won’t be able to stop thinking until I know someone’s talked to her.”I knew this to be true, at least, because her daughter su ered from the sametenacious worry streak: Amy could spend an entire evening out fretting that she left thestove on, even though we didn’t cook that day.
Or was the door locked? Was I sure? Shewas a worst-case scenarist on a grand scale. Because it was never just that the door wasunlocked, it was that the door was unlocked, and men were inside, and they werewaiting to rape and kill her.I felt a layer of sweat shimmer to the surface of my skin, because, nally, my wife’sfears had come to fruition. Imagine the awful satisfaction, to know that all those yearsof worry had paid off.“Of course I’ll go.
And I’ll stop by St. Louis, see the other one, Desi, on the way.Consider it done.” I turned around, started my dramatic exit, got twenty feet, andsuddenly, there was Stucks again, his entire face still slack with sleep.“Heard the cops searched the mall yesterday,” he said, scratching his jaw. In his otherhand he held a glazed donut, unbitten.
A bagel-shaped bulge sat in the front pocket ofhis cargo pants. I almost made a joke: Is that a baked good in your pocket or are you …“Yeah. Nothing.”“Yesterday. They went yesterday, the jackasses.” He ducked, looked around, as if heworried they’d overheard him. He leaned closer to me. “You go at night, that’s whenthey’re there. Daytime, they’re down by the river, or out flying a flag.”“Flying a flag?”“You know, sitting by the exits on the highway with those signs: Laid O , Please Help,Need Beer Money, whatever,” he said, scanning the room. “Flying a flag, man.”“Okay.”“At night they’re at the mall,” he said.“Then let’s go tonight,” I said.
“You and me and whoever.”“Joe and Mikey Hillsam,” Stucks said. “They’d be up for it.” The Hillsams were three,four years older than me, town badasses. The kind of guys who were born without thefear gene, impervious to pain. Jock kids who sped through the summers on short,muscled legs, playing baseball, drinking beer, taking strange dares: skateboarding intodrainage ditches, climbing water towers naked.
The kind of guys who would peel up,wild-eyed, on a boring Saturday night and you knew something would happen, maybenothing good, but something. Of course the Hillsams would be up for it.“Good,” I said. “Tonight we go.”My disposable rang in my pocket. The thing didn’t turn off right. It rang again.“You gonna get that?” Stucks asked.“Nah.”“You should answer every call, man. You really should.”There was nothing to do for the rest of the day. No searches planned, no more yersneeded, the phones fully manned.
Marybeth started sending volunteers home; they werejust standing around, eating, bored. I suspected Stucks of leaving with half the breakfasttable in his pockets.“Anyone hear from the detectives?” Rand asked.“Nothing,” Marybeth and I both answered.“That may be good, right?” Rand asked, hopeful eyes, and Marybeth and I bothindulged him. Yes, sure.“When are you leaving for Memphis?” she asked me.“Tomorrow. Tonight my friends and I are doing another search of the mall. We don’tthink it was done right yesterday.”“Excellent,” Marybeth said.
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