flynn_gillian_gone_girl (1) (858987), страница 63
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“Don’t make it hard. Me ’n her really need it.”Greta is silent behind me.“I have about twenty bucks.”“Lie,” Je said. “You pay for everything, even rent, in cash. Greta saw you with thatbig wad of money. So hand it over, and you can leave, and we all never have to seeeach other again.”“I’ll call the police.”“Go ahead! My guest.” Jeff waits, arms crossed, thumbs in his armpits.“Your glasses are fake,” Greta says. “They’re just glass.”I say nothing, stare at her, hoping she’ll back down.
These two seem just nervousenough they may change their minds, say they’re screwing with me, and the three of uswill laugh and know otherwise but all agree to pretend.“And your hair, the roots are coming in, and they’re blond, a lot prettier thanwhatever color you dyed it—hamster—and that haircut is awful, by the way,” Greta says.“You’re hiding—from whatever. I don’t know if it really is a guy or what, but you’re notgoing to call the police. So just give us the money.”“Jeff talk you into this?” I ask.“I talked Jeff into it.”I start toward the door that Greta’s blocking. “Let me out.”“Give us the money.”I make a grab for the door, and Greta swings toward me, shoves me against the wall,one hand smashed over my face, and with the other, she pulls up my dress, yanks o themoney belt.“Don’t, Greta, I’m serious! Stop!”Her hot, salty palm is all over my face, jamming my nose; one of her ngernailsscrapes my eye.
Then she pushes me back against the wall, my head banging, my teethcoming down on the tip of my tongue. The whole scuffle is very quiet.I have the buckle end of the belt in my hand, but I can’t see to ght her, my eye iswatering too much, and she soon rips away my grip, leaving a burning scrape ofngernails on my knuckles. She shoves me again and opens the zipper, ngers throughthe money.“Holy shit,” she says. “This is like”—she counts—“more’n a thousand, two or three.Holy shit. Damn, girl! You rob a bank?”“She may have,” Jeff says. “Embezzlement.”In a movie, one of Nick’s movies, I would upthrust my palm into Greta’s nose, dropher to the oor bloody and unconscious, then roundhouse Je . But the truth is, I don’tknow how to ght, and there are two of them, and it doesn’t seem worth it.
I will run atthem, and they will grab me by the wrists while I pat and fuss at them like a child, orthey will get really angry and beat the crap out of me. I’ve never been hit. I’m scared ofgetting hurt by someone else.“You going to call the police, go ahead and call them,” Jeff says again.“Fuck you,” I whisper.“Sorry about this,” Greta says. “Next place you go, be more careful, okay? You gottanot look like a girl traveling by herself, hiding out.”“You’ll be okay,” Jeff says.He pats me on the arm as they leave.A quarter and a dime sit on the bedside table.
It’s all my money in the world.NICK DUNNENINE DAYS GONEGood morning! I sat in bed with my laptop by my side, enjoying the online reviewsof my impromptu interview. My left eyeball was throbbing a bit, a light hangover fromthe cheap Scotch, but the rest of me was feeling pretty satisfied. Last night I cast the firstline to lure my wife back in. I’m sorry, I will make it up to you, I will do whatever you wantfrom now on, I will let the world know how special you are.Because I was fucked unless Amy decided to show herself. Tanner’s detective (a wiry,clean-cut guy, not the boozy noir gumshoe I’d hoped for) had come up with nothing sofar—my wife had disappeared herself perfectly. I had to convince Amy to come back tome, flush her out with compliments and capitulation.If the reviews were any indication, I made the right call, because the reviews weregood.
They were very good:The Iceman Melteth!I KNEW he was a good guy.In vino veritas!Maybe he didn’t kill her after all.Maybe he didn’t kill her after all.Maybe he didn’t kill her after all.And they’d stopped calling me Lance.Outside my house, the cameramen and journalists were restless, they wanted astatement from the guy who Maybe Didn’t Kill Her After All. They were yelling at mydrawn blinds: Hey, Nick, come on out, tell us about Amy. Hey, Nick, tell us about yourtreasure hunt. For them it was just a new wrinkle in a ratings bonanza, but it was muchbetter than Nick, did you kill your wife?And then, suddenly, they were yelling Go’s name—they loved Go, she had no pokerface, you knew if Go was sad, angry, worried; stick a caption underneath, and you hada whole story.
Margo, is your brother innocent? Margo, tell us about … Tanner, is your clientinnocent? Tanner—The doorbell rang, and I opened the door while hiding behind it because I was stilldisheveled; my spiky hair and wilted boxers would tell their own story. Last night, oncamera, I was adorably smitten, a tad tipsy, in vino veritastic. Now I just looked like adrunk. I closed the door and waited for two more glowing reviews of my performance.“You don’t ever—ever—do something like that again,” Tanner started.
“What the hellis wrong with you, Nick? I feel like I need to put one of those toddler leashes on you.How stupid can you be?”“Have you seen all the comments online? People love it. I’m turning around publicopinion, like you told me to.”“You don’t do that kind of thing in an uncontrolled environment,” he said. “What ifshe worked for Ellen Abbott? What if she started asking you questions that were harderthan What do you want to say to your wife, cutie-pumpkin-pie?” He said this in a girlishsingsong. His face under the orange spray tan was red, giving him a radioactive palette.“I trusted my instincts. I’m a journalist, Tanner, you have to give me some credit thatI can smell bullshit. She was genuinely sweet.”He sat down on the sofa, put his feet on the ottoman that would never have ippedover on its own. “Yeah, well, so was your wife once,” he said.
“So was Andie once.How’s your cheek?”It still hurt; the bite seemed to throb as he reminded me of it. I turned to Go forsupport.“It wasn’t smart, Nick,” she said, sitting down across from Tanner. “You were really,really lucky—it turned out really well, but it might not have.”“You guys are really overreacting.
Can we enjoy a small moment of good news? Justthirty seconds of good news in the past nine days? Please?”Tanner pointedly looked at his watch. “Okay, go.”When I started to talk, he popped his index nger, made the uhp-uhp noise thatgrown-ups make when children try to interrupt.
Slowly, his index nger lowered, thenlanded on the watch face.“Okay, thirty seconds. Did you enjoy it?” He paused to see if I’d say anything—thepointed silence a teacher allows after asking the disruptive student: Are you donetalking? “Now we need to talk. We are in a place where excellent timing is absolutelykey.”“I agree.”“Gee, thanks.” He arched an eyebrow at me. “I want to go to the police very, verysoon with the contents of the woodshed.
While the hoi polloi is—”Just hoi polloi, I thought, not the hoi polloi. It was something Amy had taught me.“—all loving on you again. Or, excuse me, not again. Finally. The reporters havefound Go’s house, and I don’t feel secure leaving that woodshed, its contents, undisclosedmuch longer. The Elliotts are …?”“We can’t count on the Elliotts’ support anymore,” I said. “Not at all.”Another pause.
Tanner decided not to lecture me, or even ask what happened.“So we need offense,” I said, feeling untouchable, angry, ready.“Nick, don’t let one good turn make you feel indestructible,” Go said. She pressedsome extra-strengths from her purse into my hand. “Get rid of your hangover. You needto be on today.”“It’s going to be okay,” I told her. I popped the pills, turned to Tanner. “What do wedo? Let’s make a plan.”“Great, here’s the deal,” Tanner said. “This is incredibly unorthodox, but that’s me.Tomorrow we are doing an interview with Sharon Schieber.”“Wow, that’s … for sure?” Sharon Schieber was as good as I could ask for: the toprated (ages 30–55) network (broader reach than cable) newswoman (to prove I couldhave respectful relations with people who have vaginas) working today.
She was knownfor dabbling very occasionally in the impure waters of true-crime journalism, but whenshe did, she got freakin’ righteous. Two years ago, she took under her silken wing ayoung mother who had been imprisoned for shaking her infant to death. SharonSchieber presented a whole legal—and very emotional—defense case over a series ofnights. The woman is now back home in Nebraska, remarried and expecting a child.“That’s for sure.
She got in touch after the video went viral.”“So the video did help.” I couldn’t resist.“It gave you an interesting wrinkle: Before the video, it was clear you did it. Nowthere’s a slight chance you didn’t. I don’t know how it is you finally seemed genuine—”“Because last night it served an actual purpose: Get Amy back,” Go said. “It was ano ensive maneuver. Where before it would just be indulgent, undeserved, disingenuousemotion.”I gave her a thank-you smile.“Well, keep remembering that it is serving a purpose,” Tanner said.
“Nick, I’m notfucking around here: This is beyond unorthodox. Most lawyers would be shutting youup. But it’s something I’ve been wanting to try. The media has saturated the legalenvironment. With the Internet, Facebook, YouTube, there’s no such thing as anunbiased jury anymore. No clean slate. Eighty, ninety percent of a case is decided beforeyou get in the courtroom. So why not use it—control the story. But it’s a risk. I wantevery word, every gesture, every bit of information planned out ahead of time. But youhave to be natural, likable, or this will all backfire.”“Oh, that sounds simple,” I said. “One hundred percent canned yet totally genuine.”“You have to be extremely careful with your wording, and we will tell Sharon thatyou won’t answer certain questions.
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