flynn_gillian_gone_girl (1) (858987), страница 62
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He has been talkingover the crowd. He’ll go home and gargle with warm salt water, like his mother alwaysmade him do. If I were at home with him, he’d ask me to heat the water and make it forhim, because he never got the right amount of salt. “And it made me … realize a lot. Sheis the only person in the world who has the power to surprise me, you know? Everyoneelse, I always know what they’re going to say, because everyone says the same thing.We all watch the same shows, we read the same stu , we recycle everything. But Amy,she is her own perfect person. She just has this power over me.”“Where do you think she is now, Nick?”My husband looks down at his wedding band and twirls it twice.“Are you okay, Nick?”“The truth? No.
I failed my wife so entirely. I have been so wrong. I just hope it’s nottoo late. For me. For us.”“You’re at the end of your rope. Emotionally.”Nick looks right at the camera. “I want my wife. I want her to be right here.” Hetakes a breath. “I’m not the best at showing emotion. I know that. But I love her. I needher to be okay. She has to be okay. I have so much to make up to her.”“Like what?”He laughs, the chagrined laugh that even now I nd appealing. In better days, I usedto call it the talk-show laugh: It was the quick downward glance, the scratching of acorner of the mouth with a casual thumb, the inhaled chuckle that a charming moviestar always deploys right before telling a killer story.“Like, none of your business.” He smiles.
“I just have a lot to make up to her. I wasn’tthe husband I could have been. We had a few hard years, and I … I lost my shit. Istopped trying. I mean, I’ve heard that phrase a thousand times: We stopped trying.Everyone knows it means the end of a marriage—it’s textbook. But I stopped trying. Itwas me. I wasn’t the man I needed to be.” Nick’s lids are heavy, his speech o -kilterenough that his twang is showing. He is past tipsy, one drink before drunk.
His cheeksare pink with alcohol. My ngertips glow, remembering the heat of his skin when hehad a few cocktails in him.“So how would you make it up to her?” The camera wobbles for a second; the girl isgrabbing her drink.“How will I make it up to her. First I’m going to find her and bring her home.
You canbet on that. Then? Whatever she needs from me, I’ll give her. From now on. Because Ireached the end of the treasure hunt, and I was brought to my knees. Humbled. My wifehas never been more clear to me than she is now. I’ve never been so sure of what Ineeded to do.”“If you could talk to Amy right now, what would you tell her?”“I love you. I will find you. I will …”I can tell he is about to do the Daniel Day-Lewis line from The Last of the Mohicans:“Stay alive … I will nd you.” He can’t resist de ecting any sincerity with a quick line ofmovie dialogue. I can feel him teetering right on the edge of it. He stops himself.“I love you forever, Amy.”How heartfelt.
How unlike my husband.Three morbidly obese hill people on motorized scooters are between me and mymorning co ee. Their asses mushroom over the sides of the contraptions, but they stillneed another Egg McMu n. There are literally three people, parked in front of me, inline, inside the McDonald’s.I actually don’t care. I’m curiously cheerful despite this twist in the plan. Online, thevideo is already spiral-viraling away, and the reaction is surprisingly positive.Cautiously optimistic: Maybe this guy didn’t kill his wife after all.
That is, word for word,the most common refrain. Because once Nick lets his guard down and shows someemotion, it’s all there. No one could watch that video and believe he was putting up anact. It was no swallow-the-pain sort of amateur theater. My husband loves me. Or atleast last night he loved me. While I was plotting his doom in my crummy little cabinthat smells of moldy towel, he loved me.It’s not enough.
I know that, of course. I can’t change my plan. But it gives me pause.My husband has nished the treasure hunt and he is in love. He is also deeply distressed:on one cheek I swear I could spot a hive.I pull up to my cabin to nd Dorothy knocking on my door.
Her hair is wet from theheat, brushed straight back like a Wall Street slickster’s. She is in the habit of swipingher upper lip, then licking the sweat o her ngers, so she has her index nger in hermouth like a buttery corncob as she turns to me.“There she is,” she says. “The truant.”I am late on my cabin payment. Two days. It almost makes me laugh: I am late onrent.“I’m so sorry, Dorothy. I’ll come by with it in ten minutes.”“I’ll wait, if you don’t mind.”“I’m not sure if I’m going to stay. I might have to head on.”“Then you’d still owe me the two days. Eighty dollars, please.”I duck into my cabin, undo my imsy money belt.
I counted my cash on my bed thismorning, taking a good long time doling out each bill, a teasing economic striptease,and the big reveal was that I have, somehow, I have only $8,849 left. It costs a lot tolive.When I open the door to hand Dorothy the cash ($8,769 left), I see Greta and Jehanging out on Greta’s porch, watching the cash exchange hands.
Je isn’t playing hisguitar, Greta isn’t smoking. They seem to be standing on her porch just to get a betterlook at me. They both wave at me, hey, sweetie, and I wave limply back. I close the doorand start packing.It’s strange how little I own in this world when I used to own so much. I don’t ownan eggbeater or a soup bowl.
I own sheets and towels, but I don’t own a decent blanket.I own a pair of scissors so I can keep my hair butchered. It makes me smile because Nickdidn’t own a pair of scissors when we moved in together. No scissors, no iron, nostapler, and I remember asking him how he thought he was possibly civilized without apair of scissors, and he said of course he wasn’t and swooped me up in his arms andthrew me on the bed and pounced on top of me, and I laughed because I was still CoolGirl.
I laughed instead of thinking about what it meant.One should never marry a man who doesn’t own a decent set of scissors. That wouldbe my advice. It leads to bad things.I fold and pack my clothes in my tiny backpack—the same three out ts I bought andkept in my getaway car a month ago so I didn’t have to take anything from home.
Tossin my travel toothbrush, calendar, comb, lotion, the sleeping pills I bought, back when Iwas going to drug and drown myself. My cheap swimsuits. It takes such little time, thewhole thing.I put on my latex gloves and wipe down everything. I pull out the drains to get anytrapped hair. I don’t really think Greta and Je know who I am, but if they do, I don’twant to leave any proof, and the whole time I say to myself, This is what you get forrelaxing, this is what you get for not thinking all the time, all the time. You deserve to getcaught, a girl who acts so stupidly, and what if you left hairs in the front o ce, then what, andwhat if there are ngerprints in Je ’s car or Greta’s kitchen, what then, why did you ever thinkyou could be someone who didn’t worry? I picture the police scouring the cabins, ndingnothing, and then, like a movie, I go in for a close-up of one lone mousy hair of mine,drifting along the concrete floor of the pool, waiting to damn me.Then my mind swings the other way: Of course no one is going to show up to look foryou here.
All the police have to go on is the claim of a few grifters that they saw the realAmy Elliott Dunne at a cheap broke-down cabin court in the middle of nowhere. Littlepeople wanting to feel bigger, that’s what they’d assume.An assertive knock at the door.
The kind a parent gives right before swinging thedoor wide: I own this place. I stand in the middle of my room and debate not answering.Bang bang bang. I understand now why so many horror movies use that device—themysterious knock on the door—because it has the weight of a nightmare. You don’tknow what’s out there, yet you know you’ll open it. You’ll think what I think: No one badever knocks.Hey, sweetheart, we know you’re home, open up!I strip o my latex gloves, open the door, and Je and Greta are standing on myporch, the sun to their backs, their features in shadow.“Hey, pretty lady, can we come in?” Jeff asks.“I actually— I was going to come see you guys,” I say, trying to sound ippant,harried.
“I’m leaving tonight—tomorrow or tonight. Got a call from back home, got toget going back home.”“Home Louisiana or home Savannah?” Greta says. She and Je have been talkingabout me.“Louisi—”“It doesn’t matter,” Jeff says, “let us in for a second, we come to say goodbye.”He steps toward me, and I think about screaming or slamming the door, but I don’tthink either will go well. Better to pretend everything is fine and hope that is true.Greta closes the door behind them and leans against it as Je wanders into the tinybedroom, then the kitchen, chatting about the weather. Opening doors and cabinets.“You got to clear everything out; Dorothy will keep your deposit if you don’t,” hesays. “She’s a stickler.” He opens the refrigerator, peers into the crisper, the freezer. “Noteven a jar of ketchup can you leave. I always thought that was weird.
Ketchup doesn’tgo bad.”He opens the closet and lifts up the cabin bedding I’ve folded, shakes out the sheets.“I always, always shake out the sheets,” he says. “Just to make sure nothing is inside—asock or underwear or what have you.”He opens the drawer of my bedside table, kneels down, and looks all the way to theback. “Looks like you’ve done a good job,” he says, standing up and smiling, brushinghis hands off on his jeans. “Got everything.”He scans me, neck to foot and back up. “Where is it, sweetheart?”“What’s that?”“Your money.” He shrugs.
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