flynn_gillian_gone_girl (1) (858987), страница 49
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Her.My parents are worried, of course, but how can I feel sorry for them, since theymade me this way and then deserted me? They never, ever fully appreciated the factthat they were earning money from my existence, that I should have been gettingroyalties. Then, after they siphoned off my money, my “feminist” parents let Nick bundleme o to Missouri like I was some piece of chattel, some mail-order bride, someproperty exchange.
Gave me a fucking cuckoo clock to remember them by. Thanks forthirty-six years of service! They deserve to think I’m dead, because that’s practically thestate they consigned me to: no money, no home, no friends. They deserve to su er too.If you can’t take care of me while I’m alive, you have made me dead anyway. Just likeNick, who destroyed and rejected the real me a piece at a time—you’re too serious, Amy,you’re too uptight, Amy, you overthink things, you analyze too much, you’re no fun anymore,you make me feel useless, Amy, you make me feel bad, Amy.
He took away chunks of mewith blasé swipes: my independence, my pride, my esteem. I gave, and he took andtook. He Giving Treed me out of existence.That whore, he picked that little whore over me. He killed my soul, which should bea crime. Actually, it is a crime. According to me, at least.NICK DUNNESEVEN DAYS GONEI had to phone Tanner, my brand-new lawyer, mere hours after I’d hired him, andsay the words that would make him regret taking my money: I think my wife is framingme.
I couldn’t see his face, but I could imagine it—the eye roll, the grimace, theweariness of a man who hears nothing but lies for a living.“Well,” he nally said after a gaping pause, “I’ll be there rst thing tomorrowmorning, and we will sort this out—everything on the table—and in the meantime, sittight, okay? Go to sleep and sit tight.”Go took his advice; she popped two sleeping pills and left me just before eleven,while I literally sat tight, in an angry ball on her couch.
Every so often I’d go outsideand glare at the woodshed, my hands on my hips, as if it were a predator I could scareo . I’m not sure what I thought I was accomplishing, but I couldn’t stop myself. I couldstay seated for five minutes, tops, before I’d have to go back outside and stare.I had just come back inside when a knock rattled the back door. Fucking Christ. Notquite midnight. Cops would come to the front—right?—and reporters had yet to stakeout Go’s (this would change, in a matter of days, hours).
I was standing, unnerved,undecided, in the living room when the banging came again, louder, and I cursed undermy breath, tried to get myself angry instead of scared. Deal with it, Dunne.I ung open the door. It was Andie. It was goddamn Andie, pretty as a picture,dressed up for the occasion, still not getting it—that she was going to put my neck rightin the noose.“Right in the noose, Andie.” I yanked her inside, and she stared at my hand on herarm. “You are going to put my neck right in the fucking noose.”“I came to the back door,” she said.
When I stared her down, she didn’t apologize, shesteeled herself. I could literally see her features harden. “I needed to see you, Nick. I toldyou. I told you I had to see you or talk to you every day, and today you disappeared.Straight to voice mail, straight to voice mail, straight to voice mail.”“If you don’t hear from me, it’s because I can’t talk, Andie. Jesus, I was in New York,getting a lawyer. He’ll be here first thing tomorrow.”“You got a lawyer. That was what kept you so busy that you couldn’t call me for tenseconds?”I wanted to smack her.
I took a breath. I had to cut things o with Andie. It wasn’tjust Tanner’s warning I had in mind. My wife knew me: She knew I’d do almostanything to avoid dealing with confrontation. Amy was depending on me to be stupid,to let the relationship linger—and to ultimately be caught. I had to end it. But I had todo it perfectly. Make her believe that this was the decent thing.“He’s actually given me some important advice,” I began.
“Advice I can’t ignore.”I’d been so sweet and doting just last night, at my mandatory meeting in our pretendfort. I’d made so many promises, trying to calm her down. She wouldn’t see this coming.She wouldn’t take this well.“Advice? Good. Is it to stop being such an asshole to me?”I felt the rage rise up; that this was already turning into a high school ght. A thirtyfour-year-old man in the middle of the worst night of my life, and I was having a meetme by the lockers! squabble with a pissed-o girl.
I shook her once, hard, a tiny dropletof spit landing on her lower lip.“I— You don’t get it, Andie. This isn’t some joke, this is my life.”“I just … I need you,” she said, looking down at her hands. “I know I keep sayingthat, but I do. I can’t do it, Nick. I can’t go on like this. I’m falling apart.
I’m so scaredall the time.”She was scared. I pictured the police knocking, and here I was with a girl I’d beenfucking the morning my wife went missing. I’d sought her out that day—I had nevergone to her apartment since that rst night, but I went right there that morning,because I’d spent hours with my heart pounding behind my ears, trying to get myself tosay the words to Amy: I want a divorce. I am in love with someone else. We have to end. Ican’t pretend to love you, I can’t do the anniversary thing—it would actually be more wrongthan cheating on you in the rst place. (I know: debatable.) But while I was gathering theguts, Amy had preempted me with her speech about still loving me (lying bitch!), and Ilost my nerve.
I felt like the ultimate cheat and coward, and—the catch-22—I cravedAndie to make me feel better.But Andie was no longer the antidote to my nerves. Quite the opposite.The girl was wrapping herself around me even now, oblivious as a weed.“Look, Andie,” I said, a big exhale, not letting her sit down, keeping her near thedoor. “You are such a special person to me.
You’ve handled all this so amazingly well—”Make her want to keep you safe.“I mean …” Her voice wavered. “I feel so sorry, for Amy. Which is insane. I know Idon’t even have a right to feel sad for her, or worried. And on top of feeling sad, I feelso guilty.” She leaned her head against my chest. I retreated, held her at arm’s length soshe had to look at me.“Well, that’s one thing I think we can x.
I think we need to x,” I said, pulling upTanner’s exact words.“We should go to the police,” she said. “I’m your alibi for that morning, we’ll just tellthem.”“You’re my alibi for about an hour that morning,” I said. “No one saw or heard Amyafter eleven P.M. the night before. The police can say I killed her before I saw you.”“That’s disgusting.”I shrugged. I thought, for a second, about telling her about Amy—my wife is framingme—and quickly dismissed it. Andie couldn’t play the game on Amy’s level.
She’d wantto be my teammate, and she’d drag me down. Andie would be a liability going forward.I put my hands on her arms again, relaunched my speech.“Look, Andie, we are both under an amazing amount of stress and pressure, and a lotof it is brought on by our feelings of guilt. Andie, the thing is, we are good people.
Wewere attracted to each other, I think, because we both have similar values. Of treatingpeople right, of doing the right thing. And right now we know what we are doing iswrong.”Her broken, hopeful expression changed—the wet eyes, the gentle touch, theydisappeared: a weird icker, a window shade pulled down, something darker in herface.“We need to end this, Andie. I think we both know that.
It’s so hard, but it’s thedecent thing to do. I think it’s the advice we’d give ourselves if we could think straight.As much as I love you, I am still married to Amy. I have to do the right thing.”“And if she’s found?” She didn’t say dead or alive.“That’s something we can discuss then.”“Then! And until then, what?”I shrugged helplessly: Until then, nothing.“What, Nick? I fuck off until then?”“That’s an ugly choice of words.”“But that’s what you mean.” She smirked.“I’m sorry, Andie. I don’t think it’s right for me to be with you right now. It’sdangerous for you, it’s dangerous for me. It doesn’t sit well with my conscience.
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