flynn_gillian_gone_girl (1) (858987), страница 65
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“Mention her a lot, then. And that you own the bar with yoursister—always mention your sister when you mention the bar. If you own a bar on yourown, you’re a player; if you own it with your beloved twin sister, you’re—”“Irish.”“Go on.”“And so it all built up—” I started.“No,” Tanner said. “Implies building up to an explosion.”“So we had gotten o track a little, but I was considering our ve-year anniversaryas a time to revive our relationship—”“Recommit to our relationship,” Tanner called. “Revive means something was dead.”“Recommit to our relationship—”“And so how does fucking a twenty-three-year-old gure in to this rejuvenativepicture?” Betsy asked.Tanner lobbed a jellybean her way.
“A little out of character, Bets.”“I’m sorry, guys, but I’m a woman, and that smells like bullshit, like mile-awaybullshit. Recommit to the relationship, please. That girl was still in the picture whenAmy went missing. Women are going to hate you, Nick, unless you suck it up. Be upfront, don’t stall. You can add it on: We lost our jobs, we moved, my parents were dying.Then I fucked up. I fucked up huge. I lost track of who I was, and unfortunately, it took losingAmy to realize it. You have to admit you’re a jerk and that everything was all your fault.”“So, like, what men are supposed to do in general,” I said.Betsy ung an annoyed look at the ceiling. “And that’s an attitude, Nick, you shouldbe real careful on.”AMY ELLIOTT DUNNENINE DAYS GONEI am penniless and on the run. How fucking noir.
Except that I am sitting in myFestiva at the far end of the parking lot of a vast fast-food complex on the banks of theMississippi River, the smell of salt and factory-farm meat oating on the warm breezes.It is evening now—I’ve wasted hours—but I can’t move. I don’t know where to move to.The car gets smaller by the hour—I am forced to curl up like a fetus or my legs fallasleep. I certainly won’t sleep tonight. The door is locked, but I still await the tap on thewindow, and I know I will peek up and see either a crooked-toothed, sweet-talkingserial killer (wouldn’t that be ironic, for me to actually be murdered?) or a stern, IDdemanding cop (wouldn’t that be worse, for me to be discovered in a parking lotlooking like a hobo?). The glowing restaurant signs never go o here; the parking lot islit like a football eld—I think of suicide again, how a prisoner on suicide watch spendstwenty-four hours a day under lights, an awful thought.
My gas tank is below thequarter mark, an even more awful thought: I can drive only about an hour in anydirection, so I must choose the direction carefully. South is Arkansas, north is Iowa, westis back to the Ozarks. Or I could go east, cross the river into Illinois. Everywhere I go isthe river. I’m following it or it’s following me.I know, suddenly, what I must do.NICK DUNNETEN DAYS GONEWe spent the day of the interview huddled in the spare bedroom of Tanner’s suite,prepping my lines, xing my look. Betsy fussed over my clothes, then Go trimmed thehair above my ears with nail scissors while Betsy tried to talk me into using makeup—powder—to cut down on shine.
We all spoke in low voices because Sharon’s crew wassetting up outside; the interview would be in the suite’s living room, overlooking the St.Louis Arch. Gateway to the West. I’m not sure what the point of the landmark wasexcept to serve as a vague symbol of the middle of the country: You Are Here.“You need at least a little powder, Nick,” Betsy nally said, coming at me with thepu . “Your nose sweats when you get nervous. Nixon lost an election on nose sweat.”Tanner oversaw it all like a conductor. “Not too much o that side, Go,” he’d call.
“Bets,be very careful with that powder, better too little than too much.”“We should have Botoxed him,” she said. Apparently, Botox ghts sweat as well aswrinkles—some of their clients got a series of underarm shots before a trial, and theywere already suggesting such a thing for me. Gently, subtly suggesting, should we go totrial.“Yeah, I really need the press to get wind that I was having Botox treatments whilemy wife was missing,” I said. “Is missing.” I knew Amy wasn’t dead, but I also knew shewas so far out of my reach that she might as well be.
She was a wife in past tense.“Good catch,” Tanner said. “Next time do it before it comes out of your mouth.”At ve P.M., Tanner’s phone rang, and he looked at the display. “Boney.” He sent itto voice mail. “I’ll call her after.” He didn’t want any new bit of information,interrogation, gossip to force us to reformulate our message. I agreed: I didn’t wantBoney in my head just then.“You sure we shouldn’t see what she wants?” Go said.“She wants to fuck with me some more,” I said.
“We’ll call her. A few hours. She canwait.”We all rearranged ourselves, a mass group reassurance that the call was nothing toworry about. The room stayed silent for half a minute.“I have to say, I’m strangely excited to get to meet Sharon Schieber,” Go nally said.“Very classy lady. Not like that Connie Chung.”I laughed, which was the intention. Our mother had loved Sharon Schieber and hatedConnie Chung—she’d never forgiven her for embarrassing Newt Gingrich’s mother onTV, something about Newt calling Hillary Clinton a b-i-t-c-h.
I don’t remember the actualinterview, just our mom’s outrage over it.At six P.M. we entered the room, where two chairs were set up facing each other, theArch in the background, the timing picked precisely so the Arch would glow but therewould be no sunset glare on the windows. One of the most important moments of mylife, I thought, dictated by the angle of the sun. A producer whose name I wouldn’tremember clicked toward us on dangerously high heels and explained to me what Ishould expect. Questions could be asked several times, to make the interview seem assmooth as possible, and to allow for Sharon’s reaction shots.
I could not speak to mylawyer before giving an answer. I could rephrase an answer but not change thesubstance of the answer. Here’s some water, let’s get you miked.We started to move over to the chair, and Betsy nudged my arm. When I lookeddown, she showed me a pocket of jellybeans. “Remember …” she said, and tsked herfinger at me.Suddenly, the suite door swung wide and Sharon Schieber entered, as smooth as ifshe were being borne by a team of swans. She was a beautiful woman, a woman whohad probably never looked girlish. A woman whose nose probably never sweat.
She hadthick dark hair and giant brown eyes that could look doelike or wicked.“It’s Sharon!” Go said, a thrilled whisper to imitate our mom.Sharon turned to Go and nodded majestically, came over to greet us. “I’m Sharon,”she said in a warm, deep voice, taking both of Go’s hands.“Our mother loved you,” Go said.“I’m so glad,” Sharon said, managing to sound warm. She turned to me and wasabout to speak when her producer clicked up on high heels and whispered in her ear.Then waited for Sharon’s reaction, then whispered again.“Oh. Oh my God,” Sharon said.
When she turned back to me, she wasn’t smiling atall.AMY ELLIOTT DUNNETEN DAYS GONEI have made a call: to make a call. The meeting can’t happen until this evening—there are predictable complications—so I kill the day by primping and prepping.I clean myself in a McDonald’s bathroom—green gel on wet paper towels—andchange into a cheap, papery sundress. I think about what I’ll say. I am surprisinglyeager.
The shithole life was wearing on me: the communal washing machine withsomeone’s wet underwear always stuck in the rungs at the top, to be peeled out byhesitant pincered ngers; the corner of my cabin rug that was forever mysteriouslydamp; the dripping faucet in the bathroom.At ve o’clock, I begin driving north to the meeting spot, a river casino calledHorseshoe Alley. It appears out of nowhere, a blinking neon clump in the middle of ascrawny forest. I roll in on fumes—a cliché I’ve never put to practice—park the car, andtake in the view: a migration of the elderly, scuttling like broken insects on walkers andcanes, jerking oxygen tanks toward the bright lights.
Sliding in and out of the groups ofoctogenarians are hustling, overdressed boys who’ve watched too many Vegas moviesand don’t know how poignant they are, trying to imitate Rat Pack cool in cheap suits inthe Missouri woods.I enter under a glowing billboard promoting—for two nights only—the reunion of a’50s doo-wop group. Inside, the casino is frigid and close.
The penny slots clink andclang, joyful electronic chirps that don’t match the dull, drooping faces of the peoplesitting in front of the machines, smoking cigarettes above dangling oxygen masks.Penny in penny in penny in penny in penny in ding-ding-ding! penny in penny in. Themoney that they waste goes to the underfunded public schools that their bored, blinkinggrandchildren attend.
Penny in penny in. A group of wasted boys stumble past, abachelor party, the boys’ lips wet from shots; they don’t even notice me, husky andHamill-haired. They are talking about girls, get us some girls, but besides me, the onlygirls I see are golden. The boys will drink away their disappointment and try not to killfellow motorists on the way home.I wait in a pocket bar to the far left of the casino entrance, as planned, and watchthe aged boy band sing to a large snowy-haired audience, snapping and clapping along,shu ing gnarled ngers through bowls of complimentary peanuts.
The skeletal singers,withered beneath bedazzled tuxes, spin slowly, carefully, on replaced hips, the dance ofthe moribund.The casino seemed like a good idea at rst—right o the highway, lled with drunksand elderly, neither of whom are known for eyesight. But I am feeling crowded andfidgety, aware of the cameras in every corner, the doors that could snap shut.I am about to leave when he ambles up.“Amy.”I’ve called devoted Desi to my aid (and abet).
Desi, with whom I’ve never entirelylost touch, and who—despite what I’ve told Nick, my parents—doesn’t unnerve me in theslightest. Desi, another man along the Mississippi. I always knew he might come inhandy. It’s good to have at least one man you can use for anything. Desi is a whiteknight type. He loves troubled women. Over the years, after Wickshire, when we’d talk,I’d ask after his latest girlfriend, and no matter the girl, he would always say: “Oh, she’snot doing very well, unfortunately.” But I know it is fortunate for Desi—the eatingdisorders, the painkiller addictions, the crippling depressions. He is never happier thanwhen he’s at a bedside. Not in bed, just perched nearby with broth and juice and agently starched voice.
Poor darling.Now he is here, dashing in a white midsummer suit (Desi changes wardrobes monthly—what was appropriate for June would not work for July—I’ve always admired thediscipline, the precision of the Collings’s costuming). He looks good. I don’t. I am tooaware of my humid glasses, the extra roll of flesh at my waist.“Amy.” He touches my cheek, then pulls me in for an embrace. Not a hug, Desidoesn’t hug, it’s more like being encased by something tailored just to you.
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