flynn_gillian_gone_girl (1) (858987), страница 51
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“Fresh sh!” he says,knocking, and if I don’t open the door immediately, he disappears, leaving the bag onmy front doorstep. I cook the sh in a decent skillet I bought at yet another Walmart,and it’s not bad, and it’s free.“Where do you get all the fish?” I ask him.“At the getting place,” he says.Dorothy, who works the front desk and has already taken a liking to me, bringstomatoes from her garden. I eat the tomatoes that smell like the earth and the sh thatsmells like the lake. I think that by next year, Nick will be locked away in a place thatsmells only of the inside. Fabricated odors: deodorant and old shoes and starchy foods,stale mattresses.
His worst fear, his own personal panic dream: He nds himself in jail,realizing he did nothing wrong but unable to prove it. Nick’s nightmares have alwaysbeen about being wronged, about being trapped, a victim of forces beyond his control.He always gets up after these dreams, paces around the house, then puts on clothesand goes outside, wanders along the roads near our house, into a park—a Missouri park,a New York park—going wherever he wants.
He is a man of the outdoors, if he is notexactly outdoorsy. He’s not a hiker, a camper, he doesn’t know how to make res. Hewouldn’t know how to catch sh and present them to me. But he likes the option, helikes the choice. He wants to know he can go outside, even if he chooses instead to sit onthe couch and watch cage fighting for three hours.I do wonder about the little slut.
Andie. I thought she’d last exactly three days. Thenshe wouldn’t be able to resist sharing. I know she likes to share because I’m one of herfriends on Facebook—my pro le name is invented (Madeleine Elster, ha!), my photo isstolen from a popup ad for mortgages (blond, smiling, bene ting from historically lowinterest rates). Four months ago, Madeleine randomly asked to be Andie’s friend, andAndie, like a hapless puppy, accepted, so I know the little girl fairly well, along with allher minutiae-enthralled friends, who take many naps and love Greek yogurt and pinotgrigio and enjoy sharing that with one another. Andie is a good girl, meaning shedoesn’t post photos of herself “partying,” and she never posts lascivious messages.
Whichis unfortunate. When she’s exposed as Nick’s girlfriend, I’d prefer the media nd photosof her doing shots or kissing girls or ashing her thong; this would more easily cementher as the homewrecker she is.Homewrecker. My home was disheveled but not yet wrecked when she rst startedkissing my husband, reaching inside his trousers, slipping into bed with him. Taking hiscock in her mouth, all the way to the root so he feels extra big as she gags. Taking it inher ass, deep. Taking cum shots to the face and tits, then licking it o , yum. Taking,de nitely taking. Her type would. They’ve been together for over a year. Every holiday.I went through his credit-card statements (the real ones) to see what he got her forChristmas, but he’s been shockingly careful.
I wonder what it feels like to be a womanwhose Christmas present must be bought in cash. Liberating. Being an undocumentedgirl means being the girl who doesn’t have to call the plumber or listen to gripes aboutwork or remind and remind him to pick up some goddamn cat food.I need her to break. I need 1) Noelle to tell someone about my pregnancy; 2) thepolice to nd the diary; 3) Andie to tell someone about the a air. I suppose I had herstereotyped—that a girl who posts updates on her life ve times a day for anyone to seewould have no real understanding of what a secret is.
She’s made occasional grazingmentions of my husband online:Saw Mr. Hunky today.(Oh, do tell!)(When do we get to meet this stud?)(Bridget likes this!)A kiss from a dreamy guy makes everything better.(Too true!)(When do we get to meet Dreamy?!)(Bridget likes this!)But she’s been surprisingly discreet for a girl of her generation.
She’s a good girl (fora cunt). I can picture her, that heart-shaped face tilted to one side, the gently furrowedbrow. I just want you to know I’m on your side, Nick. I’m here for you. Probably baked himcookies.The Ellen Abbott cameras are now panning the Volunteer Center, which looks a littleshabby. A correspondent is talking about how my disappearance has “rocked this tinytown,” and behind her, I can see a table lined with homemade casseroles and cakes forpoor Nicky.
Even now the asshole has women taking care of him. Desperate womenspotting an opening. A good-looking, vulnerable man—and ne, he may have killed hiswife, but we don’t know that. Not for sure. For now it’s a relief just to have a man tocook for, the fortysomething equivalent of driving your bike past the cute boy’s house.They are showing Nick’s grinning cell-phone photo again.
I can picture the townieslut in her lonely, glistening kitchen—a trophy kitchen bought with alimony money—mixing and baking while having an imaginary conversation with Nick: No, I’m fortythree, actually. No, really, I am! No, I don’t have men swarming all over me, I really don’t, themen in town aren’t that interesting, most of them …I get a burst of jealousy toward that woman with her cheek against my husband’s.She is prettier than me as I am now. I eat Hershey bars and oat in the pool for hoursunder a hot sun, the chlorine turning my esh rubbery as a seal’s.
I’m tan, which I’venever been before—at least not a dark, proud, deep tan. A tanned skin is a damagedskin, and no one likes a wrinkled girl; I spent my life slick with SPF. But I let myselfdarken a bit before I disappeared, and now, ve days in, I’m on my way to brown.“Brown as a berry!” old Dorothy, the manager, says. “You are brown as a berry, girl!”she says with delight when I come in to pay next week’s rent in cash.I have dark skin, my mouse-colored helmet cut, the smart-girl glasses. I gainedtwelve pounds in the months before my disappearance—carefully hidden in roomysundresses, not that my inattentive husband would notice—and already another twopounds since.
I was careful to have no photos taken of me in the months before Idisappeared, so the public will know only pale, thin Amy. I am de nitely not thatanymore. I can feel my bottom move sometimes, on its own, when I walk. A wiggle anda jiggle, wasn’t that some old saying? I never had either before. My body was abeautiful, perfect economy, every feature calibrated, everything in balance. I don’t missit.
I don’t miss men looking at me. It’s a relief to walk into a convenience store and walkright back out without some hangabout in sleeveless annel leering as I leave, somemuttered bit of misogyny slipping from him like a nacho-cheese burp. Now no one isrude to me, but no one is nice to me either. No one goes out of their way, not overly,not really, not the way they used to.I am the opposite of Amy.NICK DUNNEEIGHT DAYS GONEAs the sun came up, I held an ice cube to my cheek. Hours later, and I could still feelthe bite: two little staple-shaped creases. I couldn’t go after Andie—a worse risk than herwrath—so I finally phoned her.
Voice mail.Contain, this must be contained.“Andie, I am so sorry, I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what’s going on. Pleaseforgive me. Please.”I shouldn’t have left a voice mail, but then I thought: She may have hundreds of myvoice mails saved, for all I know. Good God, if she played a hit list of the raunchiest,nastiest, smittenist … any woman on any jury would send me away just for that. It’s onething to know I’m a cheat and another to hear my heavy teacher voice telling a youngco-ed about my giant, hard—I blushed in the dawn light. The ice cube melted.I sat on Go’s front steps, began phoning Andie every ten minutes, got nothing. I wassleepless, my nerves barbwired, when Boney pulled into the driveway at 6:12 A.M.
Isaid nothing as she walked toward me, bearing two Styrofoam cups.“Hey, Nick, I brought you some coffee. Just came over to check on you.”“I bet.”“I know you’re probably reeling. From the news about the pregnancy. She made anelaborate show of pouring two creamers into my co ee, the way I like it, and handed itto me. “What’s that?” she said, pointing to my cheek.“What do you mean?”“I mean, Nick, what is wrong with your face? There’s a giant pink …” She leaned incloser, grabbed my chin. “It’s like a bite mark.”“It must be hives. I get hives when I’m stressed.”“Mm-hmmm.” She stirred her coffee.
“You do know I’m on your side, right, Nick?”“Right.”“I am. Truly. I wish you’d trust me. I just—I’m getting to the point where I won’t beable to help you if you don’t trust me. I know that sounds like a cop line, but it’s thetruth.”We sat in a strange semi-companionable silence, sipping coffee.“Hey, so I wanted you to know before you hear it anywhere,” she said brightly.
“Wefound Amy’s purse.”“What?”“Yep, no cash left, but her ID, cell phone. In Hannibal, of all places. On the banks ofthe river, south of the steamboat landing. Our guess: Someone wanted to make it looklike it’d been tossed in the river by the perp on the way out of town, heading over thebridge into Illinois.”“Make it look like?”“It had never been fully submerged.
There are ngerprints still at the top, near thezipper. Now sometimes ngerprints can hold on even in water, but … I’ll spare you thescience, I’ll just say, the theory is, this purse was kinda settled on the banks to make sureit was found.”“Sounds like you’re telling me this for a reason,” I said.“The ngerprints we found were yours, Nick. Which isn’t that crazy—men get intotheir wives’ purses all the time. But still—” She laughed as if she got a great idea. “Igotta ask: You haven’t been to Hannibal recently, have you?”She said it with such casual con dence, I had a ash: a police tracker hiddensomewhere in the undercarriage of my car, released to me the morning I went toHannibal.“Why, exactly, would I go to Hannibal to get rid of my wife’s purse?”“Say you’d killed your wife and staged the crime scene in your home, trying to get usto think she was attacked by an outsider.
But then you realized we were beginning tosuspect you, so you wanted to plant something to get us to look outside again. That’s thetheory. But at this point, some of my guys are so sure you did it, they’d nd any theorythat fit. So let me help you: You in Hannibal lately?”I shook my head.
“You need to talk to my lawyer. Tanner Bolt.”“Tanner Bolt? You sure that’s the way you want to go, Nick? I feel like we’ve beenpretty fair with you so far, pretty open. Bolt, he’s a … he’s a last-ditch guy. He’s the guyguilty people call in.”“Huh. Well, I’m clearly your lead suspect, Rhonda. I have to look out for myself.”“Let’s all get together when he gets in, okay? Talk this through.”“Definitely—that’s our plan.”“A man with a plan,” Boney said. “I’ll look forward to it.” She stood up, and as shewalked away, she called back: “Witch hazel’s good for hives.”An hour later, the doorbell rang, and Tanner Bolt stood there in a baby-blue suit, andsomething told me it was the look he wore when he went “down South.” He wasinspecting the neighborhood, eyeing the cars in the driveways, assessing the houses.
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