flynn_gillian_gone_girl (1) (858987), страница 50
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It’s justhow I feel.”“Yeah? You know how I feel?” Her eyes burst over, tears streaming down her cheeks.“I feel like a dumb college girl that you started fucking because you were bored withyour wife and I made it extremely convenient for you. You could go home to Amy andeat dinner with her and play around in your little bar that you bought with her money,and then you could meet me at your dying dad’s house and jack o on my tits because,poor you, your mean wife would never let you do that.”“Andie, you know that’s not—”“What a shit you are.
What kind of man are you?”“Andie, please.” Contain this, Nick. “I think because you haven’t been able to talkabout this stuff, everything has gotten a little bigger in your mind, a little—”“Fuck you. You think I’m some dumb kid, some pathetic student you can manage? Istick by you through all this—this talk about how you might be a murderer—and as soonas it’s a little tough for you? No, no. You don’t get to talk about conscience and decencyand guilt and feel like you are doing the right thing. Do you understand me? Becauseyou are a cheating, cowardly, selfish shit.”She turned away from me, sobbing, sucking in loud gulps of moist air, and breathingout mewls, and I tried to stop her, I grabbed her by the arm.
“Andie, this isn’t how Iwant to—”“Hands off me! Hands off me!”She moved toward the back door, and I could see what would happen, the hatred andembarrassment coming o her like heat, I knew she’d open a bottle of wine, or two, andthen she’d tell a friend, or her mother, and it would spread like an infection.I moved in front of her, barring her way to the door—Andie, please—and she reachedup to slap me, and I grabbed her arm, just for defense. Our joined arms moved up anddown and up and down like crazed dance partners.“Let me go, Nick, or I swear …”“Just stay for a minute.
Just listen to me.”“You, let me go!”She moved her face toward mine like she was going to kiss me. She bit me. I jerkedback and she shot out the door.AMY ELLIOTT DUNNEFIVE DAYS GONEYou may call me Ozark Amy. I am ensconced in the Hide-A-Way Cabins (has everthere been a more apt name?), and I sit quietly, watching all the levers and latches I putin place do their work.I have shed myself of Nick, and yet I think about him more than ever. Last night at10:04 P.M.
my disposable cell phone rang. (That’s right, Nick, you’re not the only onewho knows the old “secret cell phone” trick.) It was the alarm company. I didn’t answer,of course, but now I know Nick has made it as far as his dad’s house. Clue 3. I changedthe code two weeks before I disappeared and listed my secret cell as the rst number tocall.
I can picture Nick, my clue in hand, entering his dad’s dusty, stale house, fumblingwith the alarm code … then the time runs out. Beep beep beeeep! His cell is listed as thebackup if I can’t be reached (and I obviously can’t).So he tripped the alarm, and he talked to someone at the alarm company, and so he’son record as being in his dad’s house after my disappearance. Which is good for theplan. It’s not foolproof, but it doesn’t have to be foolproof. I’ve already left enough forthe police to make a case against Nick: the staged scene, the mopped-up blood, thecredit-card bills.
All these will be found by even the most incompetent policedepartments. Noelle will spill my pregnancy news very soon (if she hasn’t already). It isenough, especially once the police discover Able Andie (able to suck cock on command).So all these extras, they’re just bonus fuck-yous. Amusing booby traps. I love that I am awoman with booby traps.Ellen Abbott is part of my plan too. The biggest cable crime-news show in thecountry. I adore Ellen Abbott, I love how protective and maternal she gets about all themissing women on her show, and how rabid-dog vicious she is once she seizes on asuspect, usually the husband.
She is America’s voice of female righteousness. Which iswhy I’d really like her to take on my story. The Public must turn against Nick. It’s asmuch a part of his punishment as prison, for darling Nicky—who spends so much timeworrying about people liking him—to know he is universally hated. And I need Ellen tokeep me apprised of the investigation. Have the police found my diary yet? Do theyknow about Andie? Have they discovered the bumped-up life insurance? This is thehardest part: waiting for stupid people to figure things out.I ip on the TV in my little room once an hour, eager to see if Ellen has picked upmy story. She has to, I can’t see how she could resist.
I am pretty, Nick is pretty, and Ihave the Amazing Amy hook. Just before noon, she ares up, promising a special report.I stay tuned, glaring at the TV: Hurry up, Ellen. Or: Hurry up, Ellen. We have that incommon: We are both people and entities. Amy and Amy, Ellen and Ellen.Tampon commercial, detergent commercial, maxipad commercial, Windexcommercial. You’d think all women do is clean and bleed.And finally! There I am! My debut!I know from the second Ellen shows up, glowering like Elvis, that this is going to begood. A few gorgeous photos of me, a still shot of Nick with his insane love me! grinfrom the rst press conference.
News: There has been a fruitless multi-site search for“the beautiful young woman with everything going for her.” News: Nick fucked himselfalready. Taking candid photos with a townie during a search for me. This is clearly whathooked Ellen, because she is pissed. There he is, Nick in his sweetie-pie mode, the I amthe beloved of all women mode, his face pressed against the strange woman’s, as if they’rehappy-hour buddies.What an idiot. I love it.Ellen Abbott is making much of the fact that our backyard leads right to theMississippi River. I wonder then if it has been leaked—the search history on Nick’scomputer, which I made sure includes a study on the locks and dams of the Mississippi,as well as a Google search of the words body oat Mississippi River.
Not to put too ne apoint on it. It could happen—possibly, unlikely, but there is precedent—that the rivermight sweep my body all the way to the ocean. I’ve actually felt sad for myself,picturing my slim, naked, pale body, oating just beneath the current, a colony of snailsattached to one bare leg, my hair trailing like seaweed until I reach the ocean and driftdown down down to the bottom, my waterlogged esh peeling o in soft streaks, meslowly disappearing into the current like a watercolor until just the bones are left.But I’m a romantic. In real life, if Nick had killed me, I think he would have justrolled my body into a trash bag and driven me to one of the land lls in the sixty-mileradius. Just dispose of me. He’d have even taken a few items with him—the brokentoaster that’s not worth xing, a pile of old VHS tapes he’s been meaning to toss—tomake the trip efficient.I’m learning to live fairly e ciently myself. A girl has to budget when she’s dead.
Ihad time to plan, to stockpile some cash: I gave myself a good twelve months betweendeciding to disappear and disappearing. That’s why most people get caught in murders:They don’t have the discipline to wait. I have $10,200 in cash. If I’d cleared out $10,200in a month, that would have been noticed.
But I collected cash forwards from creditcards I took out in Nick’s name—the cards that would make him look like a greedy littlecheat—and I siphoned o another $4,400 from our bank accounts over the months:withdrawals of $200 or $300, nothing to attract attention. I stole from Nick, from hispockets, $20 here, $10 there, a slow deliberate stockpile—it’s like that budgeting planwhere you put the money you’d spend on your morning Starbucks into a jar, and at theend of the year you have $1,500. And I’d always steal from the tip jar when I went toThe Bar. I’m sure Nick blamed Go, and Go blamed Nick, and neither of them saidanything because they felt too sorry for the other.But I am careful with money, my point. I have enough to live on until I kill myself.I’m going to hide out long enough to watch Lance Nicholas Dunne become a worldwidepariah, to watch Nick be arrested, tried, marched o to prison, bewildered in an orangejumpsuit and handcu s.
To watch Nick squirm and sweat and swear he is innocent andstill be stuck. Then I will travel south along the river, where I will meet up with mybody, my pretend oating Other Amy body in the Gulf of Mexico. I will sign up for abooze cruise—something to get me out into the deep end but nothing requiringidenti cation. I will drink a giant ice-wet shaker of gin, and I will swallow sleepingpills, and when no one is looking, I’ll drop silently over the side, my pockets full ofVirginia Woolf rocks. It requires discipline, to drown oneself, but I have discipline inspades. My body may never be discovered, or it may resurface weeks, months, later—eroded to the point that my death can’t be time-stamped—and I will provide a last bit ofevidence to make sure Nick is marched to the padded cross, the prison table where he’llbe pumped with poison and die.I’d like to wait around and see him dead, but given the state of our justice system,that may take years, and I have neither the money nor the stamina.
I’m ready to jointhe Hopes.I did veer from my budget a bit already. I spent about $500 on items to nice-up mycabin—good sheets, a decent lamp, towels that don’t stand up by themselves from yearsof bleaching. But I try to accept what I’m o ered. There’s a man a few cabins away, ataciturn fellow, a hippie dropout of the Grizzly Adams, homemade-granola variety—fullbeard and turquoise rings and a guitar he plays on his back deck some nights. His name,he says, is Je , just like my name, I say, is Lydia. We smile only in passing, but hebrings me sh. A couple of times now, he brings a sh by, freshly stinking but scaledand headless, and presents it to me in a giant icy freezer bag.
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