flynn_gillian_gone_girl (1) (858987), страница 44
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I can swear to that. Just my sister.”He took a breath, looked at the sailboat again. “And what does this—What’s hername?”“Andie.”“What is her attitude about all this?”“She’s been great—until the pregnancy … announcement. Now I think she’s alittle … on edge. Very on edge.
Very, uh … needy is the wrong word …”“Say what you need to say, Nick. If she’s needy, then—”“She’s needy. Clingy. Needs lots of reassurance. She’s a really sweet girl, but she’syoung, and it’s, it’s been hard, obviously.”Tanner Bolt went to his minibar and pulled out a Clamato. The entire fridge waslled with Clamato. He opened the bottle and drank it in three swallows, then dabbedhis lips with a cloth napkin. “You will need to cut o , completely and forever, allcontact with Andie,” he said.
I began to speak, and he aimed a palm at me.“Immediately.”“I can’t cut it off with her just like that. Out of nowhere.”“This isn’t something to debate. Nick. I mean, come on, buddy, I really got to saythis? You cannot date around while your pregnant wife is missing. You will go tofucking prison. Now, the issue is to do it without turning her against us. Without leavingher with a vendetta, an urge to go public, anything but fond memories.
Make herbelieve that this was the decent thing, make her want to keep you safe. How are you atbreakups?”I opened my mouth, but he didn’t wait.“We’ll prep you for the conversation the same way we’d prep you for a cross-exam,okay? Now, if you want me, I’ll fly to Missouri, I’ll set up camp, and we can really get towork on this. I can be with you as soon as tomorrow if you want me for your lawyer. Doyou?”“I do.”I was back in Carthage before dinnertime. It was strange, once Tanner swept Andiefrom the picture—once it became clear that she simply couldn’t stay—how quickly Iaccepted it, how little I mourned her. On that single, two-hour ight, I transitioned fromin love with Andie to not in love with Andie.
Like walking through a door. Our relationshipimmediately attained a sepia tone: the past. How odd, that I ruined my marriage overthat little girl with whom I had nothing in common except that we both liked a goodlaugh and a cold beer after sex.Of course you’re fine with ending it, Go would say. It got hard.But there was a better reason: Amy was blooming large in my mind. She was gone,and yet she was more present than anyone else. I’d fallen in love with Amy because Iwas the ultimate Nick with her. Loving her made me superhuman, it made me feel alive.At her easiest, she was hard, because her brain was always working, working, working—I had to exert myself just to keep pace with her.
I’d spend an hour crafting a casual email to her, I became a student of arcana so I could keep her interested: the Lake poets,the code duello, the French Revolution. Her mind was both wide and deep, and I gotsmarter being with her. And more considerate, and more active, and more alive, andalmost electric, because for Amy, love was like drugs or booze or porn: There was noplateau. Each exposure needed to be more intense than the last to achieve the sameresult.Amy made me believe I was exceptional, that I was up to her level of play. That wasboth our making and undoing.
Because I couldn’t handle the demands of greatness. Ibegan craving ease and average-ness, and I hated myself for it, and ultimately, Irealized, I punished her for it. I turned her into the brittle, prickly thing she became. Ihad pretended to be one kind of man and revealed myself to be quite another. Worse, Iconvinced myself our tragedy was entirely her making.
I spent years working myselfinto the very thing I swore she was: a righteous ball of hate.On the ight home, I’d looked at Clue 4 for so long, I’d memorized it. I wanted totorture myself. No wonder her notes were so di erent this time: My wife was pregnant,she wanted to start over, return us to our dazzling, happy aliveness. I could picture herrunning around town to hide those sweet notes, eager as a schoolgirl for me to get tothe end—the announcement that she was pregnant with my child. Wood. It had to be anold-fashioned cradle. I knew my wife: It had to be an antique cradle. Although the cluewasn’t quite in an expectant-mother tone.Picture me: I’m a girl who is very badI need to be punished, and by punished, I mean hadIt’s where you store goodies for anniversary fivePardon me if this is getting contrived!A good time was had here right at sunny middayThen out for a cocktail, all so terribly gay.So run there right now, full of sweet sighs,And open the door for your big surprise.I was almost home when I gured it out.
Store goodies for anniversary ve: Goodieswould be something made of wood. To punish is to take someone to the woodshed. Itwas the woodshed behind my sister’s house—a place to stow lawn-mower parts andrusty tools—a decrepit old outbuilding, like something from a slasher movie wherecampers are slowly killed o . Go never went back there; she’d often joked of burning itdown since she moved into the house. Instead, she’d let it get even more overgrown andcobwebbed. We’d always joked that it would be a good place to bury a body.It couldn’t be.I drove across town, my face numb, my hands cold.
Go’s car was in the driveway, butI slipped past the glowing living-room window and down the steep downhill slope, andI was soon out of her sight range, out of sight of anyone. Very private.Back to the far back of the yard, on the edge of the tree line, there was the shed.I opened the door.Nonononono.part twoBOY MEETS GIRLAMY ELLIOTT DUNNETHE DAY OFI’m so much happier now that I’m dead.Technically, missing. Soon to be presumed dead. But as shorthand, we’ll say dead.
It’sbeen only a matter of hours, but I feel better already: loose joints, wavy muscles. At onepoint this morning, I realized my face felt strange, di erent. I looked in the rearviewmirror—dread Carthage forty-three miles behind me, my smug husband lounging aroundhis sticky bar as mayhem dangled on a thin piano wire just above his shitty, oblivioushead—and I realized I was smiling. Ha! That’s new.My checklist for today—one of many checklists I’ve made over the past year—sitsbeside me in the passenger seat, a spot of blood right next to Item 22: Cut myself.
ButAmy is afraid of blood, the diary readers will say. (The diary, yes! We’ll get to mybrilliant diary.) No, I’m not, not a bit, but for the past year I’ve been saying I am. I toldNick probably half a dozen times how afraid I am of blood, and when he said, “I don’tremember you being so afraid of blood,” I replied, “I’ve told you, I’ve told you so manytimes!” Nick has such a careless memory for other people’s problems, he just assumed itwas true.
Swooning at the plasma center, that was a nice touch. I really did that, I didn’tjust write that I did. (Don’t fret, we’ll sort this out: the true and the not true and themight as well be true.)Item 22, Cut myself, has been on the list a long time. Now it’s real, and my armhurts. A lot. It takes a very special discipline to slice oneself past the paper-cut layer,down to the muscle. You want a lot of blood, but not so much that you pass out, getdiscovered hours later in a kiddie pool of red with a lot of explaining to do. I held a boxcutter to my wrist rst, but looking at that crisscross of veins, I felt like a bombtechnician in an action movie: Snip the wrong line and you die.
I ended up cutting intothe inside of my upper arm, gnawing on a rag so I wouldn’t scream. One long, deepgood one. I sat cross-legged on my kitchen floor for ten minutes, letting the blood drizzlesteadily until I’d made a nice thick puddle. Then I cleaned it up as poorly as Nick wouldhave done after he bashed my head in. I want the house to tell a story of con ictbetween true and false. The living room looks staged, yet the blood has been cleaned up: Itcan’t be Amy!So the self-mutilation was worth it. Still, hours later, the slice burns under mysleeves, under the tourniquet. (Item 30: Carefully dress wound, ensuring no blood hasdripped where it shouldn’t be present. Wrap box cutter and tuck away in pocket forlater disposal.)Item 18: Stage the living room. Tip ottoman. Check.Item 12: Wrap the rst clue in its box and tuck it just out of the way so the policewill nd it before dazed husband thinks to look for it.
It has to be part of the policerecord. I want him to be forced to start the treasure hunt (his ego will make him nishit). Check.Item 32: Change into generic clothes, tuck hair in hat, climb down the banks of theriver, and scuttle along the edge, the water lapping inches below, until you reach theedge of the complex. Do this even though you know the Teverers, the only neighborswith a view of the river, will be at church.
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