flynn_gillian_gone_girl (1) (858987), страница 23
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Just one olive, though. So let me say itagain: You are WITTY. Now kiss me!I felt my soul de ate. Amy was using the treasure hunt to steer us back to each other.And it was too late. While she had been writing these clues, she’d had no idea of mystate of mind. Why, Amy, couldn’t you have done this sooner?Our timing had never been good.I opened the next clue, read it, tucked it in my pocket, then headed back home. Iknew where to go, but I wasn’t ready yet. I couldn’t handle another compliment,another kind word from my wife, another olive branch.
My feelings for her wereveering too quickly from bitter to sweet.I went back to Go’s, spent a few hours alone, drinking co ee and ipping around theTV, anxious and pissy, killing time till my eleven P.M. carpool to the mall.My twin got home just after seven, looking wilted from her solo bar shift. Her glanceat the TV told me I should turn it off.“What’d you do today?” she asked, lighting a cigarette and opping down at ourmother’s old card table.“Manned the volunteer center … then we go search the mall at eleven,” I said. Ididn’t want to tell her about Amy’s clue. I felt guilty enough.Go doled out some solitaire cards, the steady slap of them on the table a rebuke. Ibegan pacing.
She ignored me.“I was just watching TV to distract myself.”“I know, I do.”She flipped over a Jack.“There’s got to be something I can do,” I said, stalking around her living room.“Well, you’re searching the mall in a few hours,” Go said, and gave no moreencouragement. She flipped over three cards.“You sound like you think it’s a waste of time.”“Oh. No.
Hey, everything is worth checking out. They got Son of Sam on a parkingticket, right?”Go was the third person who’d mentioned this to me; it must be the mantra for casesgoing cold. I sat down across from her.“I haven’t been upset enough about Amy,” I said. “I know that.”“Maybe not.” She finally looked up at me. “You’re being weird.”“I think that instead of panicking, I’ve just focused on being pissed at her.
Becausewe were in such a bad place lately. It’s like it feels wrong for me to worry too muchbecause I don’t have the right. I guess.”“You’ve been weird, I can’t lie,” Go said. “But it’s a weird situation.” She stubbed outher cigarette. “I don’t care how you are with me. Just be careful with everyone else,okay? People judge. Fast.”She went back to her solitaire, but I wanted her attention. I kept talking.“I should probably check in on Dad at some point,” I said.
“I don’t know if I’ll tell himabout Amy.”“No,” she said. “Don’t. He was even weirder about Amy than you are.”“I always felt like she must remind him of an old girlfriend or something—the onewho got away. After he—” I made the downward swoop of a hand that signi ed hisAlzheimer’s—“he was kind of rude and awful, but …”“Yeah, but he kind of wanted to impress her at the same time,” she said. “Your basicjerky twelve-year-old boy trapped in a sixty-eight-year-old asshole’s body.”“Don’t women think that all men are jerky twelve-year-olds at heart?”“Hey, if the heart fits.”Eleven-oh-eight P.M., Rand was waiting for us just inside the automatic sliding doorsto the hotel, his face squinting into the dark to make us out. The Hillsams were drivingtheir pick-up; Stucks and I both rode in the bed.
Rand came trotting up to us in khakigolf shorts and a crisp Middlebury T-shirt. He hopped in the back, planted himself onthe wheel cover with surprising ease, and handled the introductions like he was the hostof his own mobile talk show.“I’m really sorry about Amy, Rand,” Stucks said loudly, as we hurtled out of theparking lot with unnecessary speed and hit the highway.
“She’s such a sweet person.One time she saw me out painting a house, sweating my ba—my butt o , and she droveon to 7-Eleven, got me a giant pop, and brought it back to me, right up on the ladder.”This was a lie. Amy cared so little for Stucks or his refreshment that she wouldn’thave bothered to piss in a cup for him.“That sounds like her,” Rand said, and I was ush with unwelcome, ungentlemanlyannoyance.
Maybe it was the journalist in me, but facts were facts, and people didn’tget to turn Amy into everyone’s beloved best friend just because it was emotionallyexpedient.“Middlebury, huh?” Stucks continued, pointing at Rand’s T-shirt. “Got a hell of arugby team.”“That’s right we do,” Rand said, the big smile again, and he and Stucks began animprobable discussion of liberal-arts rugby over the noise of the car, the air, the night,all the way to the mall.Joe Hillsam parked his truck outside the giant cornerstone Mervyns. We all hoppedout, stretched our legs, shook ourselves awake. The night was muggy and moon-slivered.I noticed Stucks was wearing—maybe ironically, possibly not—a T-shirt that read SaveGas, Fart in a Jar.“So, this place, what we’re doing, it’s freakin’ dangerous, I don’t want to lie,” MikeyHillsam began.
He had beefed up over the years, as had his brother; they weren’t justbarrel-chested but barrel-everythinged. Standing side by side, they were about vehundred pounds of dude.“We came here once, me and Mikey, just for—I don’t know, to see it, I guess, seewhat it had become, and we almost got our asses handed to us,” said Joe. “So tonight wetake no chances.” He reached into the cab for a long canvas bag and unzipped it toreveal half a dozen baseball bats. He began handing them out solemnly. When he got toRand, he hesitated. “Uh, you want one?”“Hell yes, I do,” Rand said, and they all nodded and smiled approval, the energy inthe circle a friendly backslap, a good for you, old man.“Come on,” Mikey said, and led us along the exterior.
“There’s a door with a locksmashed off down here near the Spencer’s.”Just then we passed the dark windows of Shoe-Be-Doo-Be, where my mom hadworked for more than half my life. I still remember the thrill of her going to apply for ajob at that most wondrous of places—the mall!—leaving one Saturday morning for thejob fair in her bright peach pantsuit, a forty-year-old woman looking for work for therst time, and her coming home with a ushed grin: We couldn’t imagine how busy themall was, so many di erent kinds of stores! And who knew which one she might workin? She applied to nine! Clothing stores and stereo stores and even a designer popcornstore. When she announced a week later that she was o cially a shoe saleslady, herkids were underwhelmed.“You’ll have to touch all sorts of stinky feet,” Go complained.“I’ll get to meet all sorts of interesting people,” our mom corrected.I peered into the gloomy window.
The place was entirely vacant except for a shoesizer lined pointlessly against the wall.“My mom used to work here,” I told Rand, forcing him to linger with me.“What kind of place was it?”“It was a nice place, they were good to her.”“I mean what did they do here?”“Oh, shoes. They did shoes.”“That’s right! Shoes. I like that. Something people actually need. And at the end ofthe day, you know what you’ve done: You’ve sold ve people shoes.
Not like writing,huh?”“Dunne, come on!” Stucks was leaning against the open door ahead; the others hadgone inside.I’d expected the mall smell as we entered: that temperature-controlled hollowness.Instead, I smelled old grass and dirt, the scent of the outdoors inside, where it had noplace being.
The building was heavy-hot, almost fuzzy, like the inside of a mattress.Three of us had giant camping ashlights, the glow illuminating jarring images: It wassuburbia, post-comet, post-zombie, post-humanity. A set of muddy shopping-cart trackslooped crazily along the white ooring. A raccoon chewed on a dog treat in the entry toa women’s bathroom, his eyes flashing like dimes.The whole mall was quiet; Mikey’s voice echoed, our footsteps echoed, Stucks’sdrunken giggle echoed.
We would not be a surprise attack, if attack was what we had inmind.When we reached the central promenade of the mall, the whole area ballooned: fourstories high, escalators and elevators crisscrossing in the black. We all gathered near adried-up fountain and waited for someone to take the lead.“So, guys,” Rand said doubtfully, “what’s the plan here? You all know this place, andI don’t. We need to figure out how to systematically—”We heard a loud metal rattle right behind us, a security gate going up.“Hey, there’s one!” Stucks yelled. He trained his ashlight on a man in a billowingrain slicker, shooting out from the entry of a Claire’s, running full speed away from us.“Stop him!” Joe yelled, and began running after him, thick tennis shoes slappingagainst the ceramic tile, Mikey right behind him, ashlight trained on the stranger, thetwo brothers calling gru y—hold up there, hey, guy, we just have a question.
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