flynn_gillian_gone_girl (1) (858987), страница 33
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A rush of heatovertakes me.“So, is this our new recruit?” Cayleese asks, suddenly beside me. “Maureen brags onyou all the time. So, we’ll need you to fill out some paperwork—”“I’m sorry, I can’t. I can’t do needles, I can’t do blood. I have a serious phobia. Iliterally can’t do it.”I realize I haven’t eaten today, and a wave of wooziness hits me. My neck feelsweak.“Everything here is very hygienic, you’re in very good hands,” Cayleese says.“No, it’s not that, truly. I’ve never given blood. My doctor gets angry at me because Ican’t even handle a yearly blood test for, like, cholesterol.”Instead, we wait. It takes two hours, Vicky and Rose strapped to churning machines.Like they are being harvested.
They’ve even been branded on their ngers, so they can’tgive more than twice in a week anywhere—the marks show up under a purple light.“That’s the James Bond part,” Vicky says, and they all giggle. Maureen hums theBond theme song (I think), and Rose makes a gun with her fingers.“Can’t you old biddies keep it down for once?” calls a white-haired woman fourchairs down. She leans up over the reclined bodies of three oily men—green-blue tattooson their arms, stubble on their chins, the kind of men I pictured donating plasma—andgives a finger wave with her loose arm.“Mary! I thought you were coming tomorrow!”“I was, but my unemployment doesn’t come for a week, and I was down to a box ofcereal and a can of creamed corn!”They all laugh like near-starvation is amusing—this town is sometimes too much, sodesperate and so in denial.
I begin to feel ill, the sound of blood churning, the longplastic ribbons of blood coursing from bodies to machines, the people being, what, beingfarmed. Blood everywhere I look, out in the open, where blood isn’t supposed to be.Deep and dark, almost purple.I get up to go to the bathroom, throw cold water on my face. I take two steps andmy ears close up, my vision pinholes, I feel my own heartbeat, my own blood, and as Ifall, I say, “Oh.
Sorry.”I barely remember the ride home. Maureen tucks me into bed, a glass of apple juice,a bowl of soup, at the bedside. We try to call Nick. Go says he’s not at The Bar, and hedoesn’t pick up his cell.The man disappears.“He was like that as a boy too—he’s a wanderer,” Maureen says. “Worst thing youcould ever do is ground him to his room.” She positions a cool washcloth on myforehead; her breath has the tangy smell of aspirin. “Your job is to rest, okay? I’ll keepcalling till I get that boy home.”When Nick gets home, I’m asleep. I wake up to hear him taking a shower, and Icheck the time: 11:04 P.M. He must have gone by The Bar after all—he likes to showerafter a shift, get the beer and salty popcorn smell off his skin.
(He says.)He slips into bed, and when I turn to him with open eyes, he looks dismayed I’mawake.“We’ve been trying to reach you for hours,” I say.“My phone was out of juice. You fainted?”“I thought you said your phone was out of juice.”He pauses, and I know he is about to lie. The worst feeling: when you just have towait and prepare yourself for the lie. Nick is old-fashioned, he needs his freedom, hedoesn’t like to explain himself. He’ll know he has plans with the guys for a week, andhe’ll still wait until an hour before the poker game to tell me nonchalantly, “Hey, so Ithought I’d join the guys for poker tonight, if that’s okay with you,” and leave me to bethe bad guy if I’ve made other plans.
You don’t ever want to be the wife who keeps herhusband from playing poker—you don’t want to be the shrew with the hair curlers andthe rolling pin. So you swallow your disappointment and say okay. I don’t think he doesthis to be mean, it’s just how he was raised. His dad did his own thing, always, and hismom put up with it. Until she divorced him.He begins his lie. I don’t even listen.NICK DUNNEFIVE DAYS GONEI leaned against the door, staring at my sister. I could still smell Andie, and I wantedthat moment to myself for one second, because now that she was gone, I could enjoy theidea of her. She always tasted like butterscotch and smelled like lavender. Lavendershampoo, lavender lotion.
Lavender’s for luck, she explained to me once. I’d need luck.“How old is she?” Go was demanding, hands on hips.“That’s where you want to start?”“How old is she, Nick?”“Twenty-three.”“Twenty-three. Brilliant.”“Go, don’t—”“Nick. Do you not realize how fucked you are?” Go said. “Fucked and dumb.” Shemade dumb—a kid’s word—hit me as hard as if I were a ten-year-old again.“It’s not an ideal situation,” I allowed, my voice quiet.“Ideal situation! You are … you’re a cheater, Nick. I mean, what happened to you?You were always one of the good guys.
Or have I just been an idiot all along?”“No.” I stared at the oor, at the same spot I stared at as a kid when my mom sat medown on the sofa and told me I was better than whatever I’d just done.“Now? You’re a man who cheats on his wife, you can’t ever undo that,” Go said. “God,even Dad didn’t cheat. You’re so—I mean, your wife is missing, Amy’s who knows where,and you’re here making time with a little—”“Go, I enjoy this revisionist history in which you’re Amy’s champion.
I mean, younever liked Amy, not even early on, and since all this happened, it’s like—”“It’s like I have sympathy for your missing wife, yeah, Nick. I have concern. Yeah, Ido. Remember how before, when I said you were being weird? You’re—It’s insane, theway you’re acting.”She paced the room, chewing a thumbnail. “The police nd out about this, and I justdon’t even know,” she said. “I’m fucking scared, Nick. This is the rst time I’m reallyscared for you. I can’t believe they haven’t found out yet. They must have pulled yourphone records.”“I used a disposable.”She paused at that.
“That’s even worse. That’s … like premeditation.”“Premeditated cheating, Go. Yes, I am guilty of that.”She succumbed for a second, collapsed on the sofa, the new reality settling on her. Intruth, I was relieved that Go knew.“How long?” she asked.“A little over a year.” I made myself pull my eyes from the oor and look at herdirectly.“Over a year? And you never told me.”“I was afraid you’d tell me to stop.
That you’d think badly of me and then I’d have tostop. And I didn’t want to. Things with Amy—”“Over a year,” Go said. “And I never even guessed. Eight thousand drunkconversations, and you never trusted me enough to tell me. I didn’t know you could dothat, keep something from me that totally.”“That’s the only thing.”Go shrugged: How can I believe you now? “You love her?” She gave it a jokey spin toshow how unlikely it was.“Yeah. I really think I do. I did. I do.”“You do realize, that if you actually dated her, saw her on a regular basis, lived withher, that she would nd some fault with you, right? That she would nd some thingsabout you that drove her crazy. That she’d make demands of you that you wouldn’t like.That she’d get angry at you?”“I’m not ten, Go, I know how relationships work.”She shrugged again: Do you? “We need a lawyer,” she said.
“A good lawyer withsome PR skills, because the networks, some cable shows, they’re sni ng around. Weneed to make sure the media doesn’t turn you into the evil philandering husband,because if that happens, I just think it’s all over.”“Go, you’re sounding a little drastic.” I actually agreed with her, but I couldn’t bear tohear the words aloud, from Go. I had to discredit them.“Nick, this is a little drastic. I’m going to make some calls.”“Whatever you want, if it makes you feel better.”Go jabbed me in the sternum with two hard ngers.
“Don’t you fucking pull that withme, Lance. ‘Oh, girls get so overexcited.’ That’s bullshit. You are in a really bad place,my friend. Get your head out of your ass and start helping me fix this.”Beneath my shirt, I could feel the spot embering on my skin as Go turned away fromme and, thank God, went back to her room. I sat on her couch, numb. Then I lay downas I promised myself I’d get up.I dreamed of Amy: She was crawling across our kitchen oor, hands and knees,trying to make it to the back door, but she was blind from the blood, and she wasmoving so slowly, too slowly.
Her pretty head was strangely misshapen, dented in onthe right side. Blood was dripping from one long hank of hair, and she was moaning myname.I woke and knew it was time to go home. I needed to see the place—the scene of thecrime—I needed to face it.No one was out in the heat. Our neighborhood was as vacant and lonely as the dayAmy disappeared. I stepped inside my front door and made myself breathe. Weird that ahouse so new could feel haunted, and not in the romantic Victorian-novel way, justreally gruesomely, shittily ruined. A house with a history, and it was only three yearsold.
The lab technicians had been all over the place; surfaces were smeared and stickyand smudged. I sat down on the sofa, and it smelled like someone, like an actual person,with a stranger’s scent, a spicy aftershave. I opened the windows despite the heat, get insome air. Bleecker trotted down the stairs, and I picked him up and petted him while hepurred.
Someone, some cop, had over lled his bowl for me. A nice gesture, afterdismantling my home. I set him down carefully on the bottom step, then climbed up tothe bedroom, unbuttoning my shirt. I lay down across the bed and put my face in thepillow, the same navy blue pillowcase I’d stared into the morning of our anniversary,The Morning Of.My phone rang. Go. I picked up.“Ellen Abbott is doing a special noon-day show. It’s about Amy. You. I, uh, it doesn’tlook good.
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