flynn_gillian_gone_girl (1) (858987), страница 73
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You are right and I am wrong, always. Come hometo me (you fucking cunt). Come home so I can kill you.AMY ELLIOTT DUNNETWENTY-SIX DAYS GONEDesi is here again. He is here almost every day now, simpering around the house,standing in the kitchen as the setting sun lights up his pro le so I can admire it, pullingme by the hand into the tulip room so I can thank him again, reminding me how safeand loved I am.He says I’m safe and loved even though he won’t let me leave, which doesn’t makeme feel safe and loved. He’s left me no car keys. Nor house keys nor the gate securitycode.
I am literally a prisoner—the gate is fteen feet high, and there are no ladders inthe house (I’ve looked). I could, I suppose, drag several pieces of furniture over to thewall, pile them up, and climb over, drop to the other side, limp or crawl away, but that’snot the point. The point is, I am his valued, beloved guest, and a guest should be able toleave when she wants. I brought this up a few days ago.
“What if I need to leave.Immediately?”“Maybe I should move in here,” he counters. “Then I could be here all the time andkeep you safe, and if anything happens, we could leave together.”“What if your mom gets suspicious and comes up here and you’re found hiding me? Itwould be awful.”His mother. I would die if his mother came up here, because she would report meimmediately. The woman despises me, all because of that incident back in high school—so long ago, and she still holds a grudge. I scratched up my face and told Desi sheattacked me (the woman was so possessive, and so cold to me, she might as well have).They didn’t talk for a month. Clearly, they’ve made up.“Jacqueline doesn’t know the code,” he says. “This is my lake house.” He pauses andpretends to think. “I really should move up here. It’s not healthy for you to spend somany hours by yourself.”But I’m not by myself, not that much. We have a bit of a routine established in justtwo weeks.
It’s a routine mandated by Desi, my posh jailer, my spoiled courtier. Desiarrives just after noon, always smelling of some expensive lunch he’s devoured withJacqueline at some white-linened restaurant, the kind of restaurant he could take me toif we moved to Greece. (This is the other option he repeatedly presents: We could moveto Greece. For some reason, he believes I will never be identi ed in a tiny little shingvillage in Greece where he has summered many times, and where I know he pictures ussipping the wine, making lazy sunset love, our bellies full of octopus.) He smells oflunch as he enters, he wafts it. He must dab goose liver behind his ears (the way hismother always smelled vaguely vaginal—food and sex, the Collings reek of, not a badstrategy).He enters, and he makes my mouth water. The smell.
He brings me something nice toeat, but not as nice as what he’s had: He’s thinning me up, he always preferred hiswomen waify. So he brings me lovely green star fruit and spiky artichokes and spinycrab, anything that takes elaborate preparation and yields little in return. I am almostmy normal weight again, and my hair is growing out. I wear it back in a headband hebrought me, and I have colored it back to my blond, thanks to hair dye he also broughtme: “I think you will feel better about yourself when you start looking more likeyourself, sweetheart,” he says.
Yes, it’s all about my well-being, not the fact that hewants me to look exactly like I did before. Amy circa 1987.I eat lunch as he hovers near me, waiting for the compliments. (To never have to saythose words—thank you—again. I don’t remember Nick ever pausing to allow me—forceme—to thank him.) I nish lunch, and he tidies up as best as he knows how. We are twopeople unaccustomed to cleaning up after ourselves; the place is beginning to look livedin—strange stains on countertops, dust on windowsills.Lunch concluded, Desi ddles with me for a while: my hair, my skin, my clothes, mymind.“Look at you,” he’ll say, tucking my hair behind my ears the way he likes it,unbuttoning my shirt one notch and loosening it at the neck so he can look at thehollow of my clavicle.
He puts a nger in the little indentation, lling the gap. It isobscene. “How can Nick have hurt you, have not loved you, have cheated on you?” Hecontinually hits these points, verbally poking a bruise. “Wouldn’t it be so lovely to justforget about Nick, those awful ve years, and move on? You have that chance, youknow, to completely start over with the right man. How many people can say that?”I do want to start over with the right man, the New Nick. Things are looking bad forhim, dire. Only I can save Nick from me. But I am trapped.“If you ever left here and I didn’t know where you were, I’d have to go to the police,”he says. “I’d have no choice. I’d need to make sure you were safe, that Nickwasn’t … holding you somewhere against your will. Violating you.”A threat disguised as concern.I look at Desi with outright disgust now.
Sometimes I feel my skin must be hot withrepulsion and with the e ort to keep that repulsion hidden. I’d forgotten about him. Themanipulation, the purring persuasion, the delicate bullying. A man who nds guilterotic. And if he doesn’t get his way, he’ll pull his little levers and set his punishment inmotion. At least Nick was man enough to go stick his dick in something.
Desi will pushand push with his waxy, tapered fingers until I give him what he wants.I thought I could control Desi, but I can’t. I feel like something very bad is going tohappen.NICK DUNNETHIRTY-THREE DAYS GONEThe days were loose and long, and then they smashed into a wall. I went out to getgroceries one August morning, and I came home to nd Tanner in my living room withBoney and Gilpin. On the table, inside a plastic evidence bag, was a long thick club withdelicate grooves for fingers.“We found this just down the river from your home on that rst search,” Boney said.“Didn’t look like anything at the time, really.
Just some of the weird otsam on ariverbank, but we keep everything in a search like that. After you showed us your Punchand Judy dolls, it clicked. So we got the lab to check it out.”“And?” I said. Toneless.Boney stood up, looked me right in the eye. She sounded sad. “We were able todetect Amy’s blood on it. This case is now classi ed as a homicide. And we believe thisto be the murder weapon.”“Rhonda, come on!”“It’s time, Nick,” she said.
“It’s time.”The next part was starting.AMY ELLIOTT DUNNEFORTY DAYS GONEI have found a piece of old twine and an empty wine bottle, and I’ve been usingthem for my project. Also some vermouth, of course. I am ready.Discipline. This will take discipline and focus. I am up to the task.I array myself in Desi’s favorite look: delicate ower. My hair in loose waves,perfumed. My skin has paled after a month inside.
I am almost without makeup: a ipof mascara, pink-pink cheeks, and clear lip gloss. I wear a clingy pink dress he boughtme. No bra. No panties. No shoes, despite the air-conditioned chill. I have a recrackling and perfume in the air, and when he arrives after lunch without invitation, Igreet him with pleasure. I wrap my arms around him and bury my face in his neck.
I rubmy cheek against his. I have been increasingly sweeter to him the past few weeks, butthis is new, this clinging.“What’s this, sweetheart?” he says, surprised and so pleased that I almost feelashamed.“I had the worst nightmare last night,” I whisper. “About Nick. I woke up, and all Iwanted was to have you here. And in the morning … I’ve spent all day wishing you werehere.”“I can always be here, if you like.”“I would,” I say, and I turn my face up to him and let him kiss me. His kiss disgustsme; it’s nibbly and hesitant, like a sh. It’s Desi being respectful of his raped, abusedwoman.
He nibbles again, wet cold lips, his hands barely on me, and I just want this allover, I want it done, so I pull him to me and push his lips open with my tongue. I wantto bite him.He pulls back. “Amy,” he says. “You’ve been through a lot. This is fast. I don’t wantyou to do this fast if you don’t want to. If you’re not sure.”I know he’s going to have to touch my breasts, I know he’s going to have to pushhimself inside me, and I want it over, I can barely restrain myself from scratching him:the idea of doing this slowly.“I’m sure,” I say. “I guess I’ve been sure since we were sixteen.
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