flynn_gillian_gone_girl (1) (858987), страница 30

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Literally. I must take my husband out ofmy dark shadowy thoughts and shine some cheerful golden light on him. I must dobetter at adoring him like I used to. Nick responds to adoration. I just wish it felt moreequal. My brain is so busy with Nick thoughts, it’s a swarm inside my head:Nicknicknicknicknick! And when I picture his mind, I hear my name as a shy crystal pingthat occurs once, maybe twice, a day and quickly subsides.

I just wish he thought aboutme as much as I do him.Is that wrong? I don’t even know anymore.NICK DUNNEFOUR DAYS GONEShe was standing there in the orange glow of the streetlight, in a imsy sundress, herhair wavy from the humidity. Andie. She rushed through the doorway, her arms splayedto hug me, and I hissed, “Wait, wait!” and shut the door just before she wrapped herselfaround me. She pressed her cheek against my chest, and I put my hand on her bare backand closed my eyes. I felt a queasy mixture of relief and horror: when you nally stopan itch and realize it’s because you’ve ripped a hole in your skin.I have a mistress.

Now is the part where I have to tell you I have a mistress and youstop liking me. If you liked me to begin with. I have a pretty, young, very youngmistress, and her name is Andie.I know. It’s bad.“Baby, why the fuck haven’t you called me?” she said, her face still pressed againstme.“I know, sweetheart, I know. You just can’t imagine. It’s been a nightmare. How didyou find me?”She held on to me. “Your house was dark, so I figured try Go’s.”Andie knew my habits, knew my habitats.

We’ve been together a while. I have apretty, very young mistress, and we’ve been together a while.“I was worried about you, Nick. Frantic. I’m sitting at Madi’s house, and the TV is,like, just on, and all of a sudden on the TV, I see this, like, guy who looks like youtalking about his missing wife. And then I realize: It is you. Can you imagine howfreaked out I was? And you didn’t even try to reach me?”“I called you.”“Don’t say anything, sit tight, don’t say anything till we talk. That’s an order, that’s notyou trying to reach me.”“I haven’t been alone much; people have been around me all the time.

Amy’sparents, Go, the police.” I breathed into her hair.“Amy’s just gone?” she asked.“She’s just gone.” I pulled myself from her and sat down on the couch, and she satbeside me, her leg pressed against mine, her arm brushing against mine. “Someone tookher.”“Nick? Are you okay?”Her chocolatey hair fell in waves over her chin, collarbone, breasts, and I watchedone single strand shake in the stream of her breathing.“No, not really.” I gave her the shhh sign and pointed toward the hallway. “Mysister.”We sat side by side, silent, the TV ickering the old cop show, the men in fedorasmaking an arrest.

I felt her hand wriggle into mine. She leaned in to me as if we weresettling in for a movie night, some lazy, carefree couple, and then she pulled my facetoward her and kissed me.“Andie, no,” I whispered.“Yes, I need you.” She kissed me again and climbed onto my lap, where she straddledme, her cotton dress slipping up around her knees, one of her ip- ops falling to theoor.

“Nick, I’ve been so worried about you. I need to feel your hands on me, that’s allI’ve been thinking about. I’m scared.”Andie was a physical girl, and that’s not code for It’s all about the sex. She was ahugger, a toucher, she was prone to running her ngers through my hair or down myback in a friendly scratch. She got reassurance and comfort from touching. And yes,fine, she also liked sex.With one quick tug, she yanked down the top of her sundress and moved my handsonto her breasts. My canine-loyal lust surfaced.I want to fuck you, I almost said aloud. You are WARM, my wife said in my ear. Ilurched away.

I was so tired, the room was swimming.“Nick?” Her bottom lip was wet with my spit. “What? Are we not okay? Is it becauseof Amy?”Andie had always felt young—she was twenty-three, of course she felt young—butright then I realized how grotesquely young she was, how irresponsibly, disastrouslyyoung she was.

Ruinously young. Hearing my wife’s name on her lips always jarred me.She said it a lot. She liked to discuss Amy, as if Amy were the heroine on a nighttimesoap opera. Andie never made Amy the enemy; she made her a character. She askedquestions, all the time, about our life together, about Amy: What did you guys do, togetherin New York, like what did you do on the weekends? Andie’s mouth went O once when Itold her about going to the opera. You went to the opera? What did she wear? Full-length?And a wrap or a fur? And her jewelry and her hair? Also: What were Amy’s friends like?What did we talk about? What was Amy like, like, really like? Was she like the girl in thebooks, perfect? It was Andie’s favorite bedtime story: Amy.“My sister is in the other room, sweetheart.

You shouldn’t even be here. God, I wantyou here, but you really shouldn’t have come, babe. Until we know what we’re dealingwith.”YOU ARE BRILLIANT YOU ARE WITTY YOU ARE WARM. Now kiss me!Andie remained atop me, her breasts out, nipples going hard from the airconditioning.“Baby, what we’re dealing with right now is I need to make sure we’re okay. That’sall I need.” She pressed against me, warm and lush. “That’s all I need. Please, Nick, I’mfreaked out.

I know you: I know you don’t want to talk right now, and that’s ne. But Ineed you … to be with me.”And I wanted to kiss her then, the way I had that very rst time: our teeth bumping,her face tilted to mine, her hair tickling my arms, a wet and tonguey kiss, me thinkingof nothing but the kiss, because it would be dangerous to think of anything but howgood it felt.

The only thing that kept me from dragging her into the bedroom now wasnot how wrong it was—it had been many shades of wrong all along—but that now itwas actually dangerous.And because there was Amy. Finally, there was Amy, that voice that had made itshome in my ear for half a decade, my wife’s voice, but now it wasn’t chiding, it wassweet again. I hated that three little notes from my wife could make me feel this way,soggy and sentimental.I had absolutely no right to be sentimental.Andie was burrowing into me, and I was wondering if the police had Go’s houseunder surveillance, if I should be listening for a knock at the door.

I have a very young,very pretty mistress.My mother had always told her kids: If you’re about to do something, and you wantto know if it’s a bad idea, imagine seeing it printed in the paper for all the world to see.Nick Dunne, a onetime magazine writer still pride-wounded from a 2010 layo , agreed toteach a journalism class for North Carthage Junior College.

The older married man promptlyexploited his position by launching a torrid fuckfest of an a air with one of his impressionableyoung students.I was the embodiment of every writer’s worst fear: a cliché.Now let me string still more clichés together for your amusement: It happenedgradually. I never meant to hurt anyone. I got in deeper than I thought I would. But itwas more than a fling. It was more than an ego boost. I really love Andie. I do.The class I was teaching—“How to Launch a Magazine Career”—contained fourteenstudents of varying degrees of skill. All girls.

I’d say women, but I think girls is factuallycorrect. They all wanted to work in magazines. They weren’t smudgy newsprint girls,they were glossies. They’d seen the movie: They pictured themselves dashing aroundManhattan, latte in one hand, cell phone in the other, adorably breaking a designer heelwhile hailing a cab, and falling into the arms of a charming, disarming soul mate withwinningly oppy hair. They had no clue about how foolish, how ignorant, their choiceof a major was.

I’d been planning on telling them as much, using my layo as acautionary tale. Although I had no interest in being the tragic gure. I pictureddelivering the story nonchalantly, jokingly—no big deal. More time to work on mynovel.Then I spent the rst class answering so many awestruck questions, and I turned intosuch a preening gasbag, such a needy fuck, that I couldn’t bear to tell the real story: thecall into the managing editor’s o ce on the second round of layo s, the hiking of thatdoomed path down the long rows of cubicles, all eyes shifting toward me, dead manwalking, me still hoping I was going to be told something di erent—that the magazineneeded me now more than ever—yes! it would be a buck-up speech, an all-hands-on-deckspeech! But no, my boss just said: I guess you know, unfortunately, why I called you in here,rubbing his eyes under his glasses, to show how weary and dejected he was.I wanted to feel like a shiny-cool winner, so I didn’t tell my students about mydemise.

I told them we had a family illness that required my attention here, which wastrue, yes, I told myself, entirely true, and very heroic. And pretty, freckled Andie sat afew feet in front of me, wide-set blue eyes under chocolatey waves of hair, cushiony lipsparted just a bit, ridiculously large, real breasts, and long thin legs and arms—an alienfuck-doll of a girl, it must be said, as di erent from my elegant, patrician wife as couldbe—and Andie was radiating body heat and lavender, clicking notes on her laptop,asking questions in a husky voice like “How do you get a source to trust you, to open upto you?” And I thought to myself, right then: Where the fuck did this girl come from? Is thisa joke?You ask yourself, Why? I’d been faithful to Amy always.

I was the guy who left thebar early if a woman was getting too flirty, if her touch was feeling too nice. I was not acheater. I don’t (didn’t?) like cheaters: dishonest, disrespectful, petty, spoiled. I hadnever succumbed. But that was back when I was happy. I hate to think the answer isthat easy, but I had been happy all my life, and now I was not, and Andie was there,lingering after class, asking me questions about myself that Amy never had, not lately.Making me feel like a worthwhile man, not the idiot who lost his job, the dope whoforgot to put the toilet seat down, the blunderer who just could never quite get it right,whatever it was.Andie brought me an apple one day.

A Red Delicious (title of the memoir of oura air, if I were to write one). She asked me to give her story an early look. It was apro le of a stripper at a St. Louis club, and it read like a Penthouse Forum piece, andAndie began eating my apple while I read it, leaning over my shoulder, the juice sittingludicrously on her lip, and then I thought, Holy shit, this girl is trying to seduce me,foolishly shocked, an aging Benjamin Braddock.It worked. I began thinking of Andie as an escape, an opportunity. An option.

I’dcome home to nd Amy in a tight ball on the sofa, Amy staring at the wall, silent, neversaying the rst word to me, always waiting, a perpetual game of icebreaking, aconstant mental challenge—what will make Amy happy today? I would think: Andiewouldn’t do that. As if I knew Andie. Andie would laugh at that joke, Andie would like thatstory. Andie was a nice, pretty, bosomy Irish girl from my hometown, unassuming andjolly. Andie sat in the front row of my class, and she looked soft, and she lookedinterested.When I thought about Andie, my stomach didn’t hurt the way it did with my wife—the constant dread of returning to my own home, where I wasn’t welcome.I began imagining how it might happen.

I began craving her touch—yes, it was likethat, just like a lyric from a bad ’80s single—I craved her touch, I craved touch ingeneral, because my wife avoided mine: At home she slipped past me like a sh, slidingjust out of grazing distance in the kitchen or the stairwell.

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