flynn_gillian_gone_girl (1) (858987), страница 81
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“Your only credibility comes from Amy. She’ssingle-handedly rehabilitated you. And she can single-handedly undo it. If she comes outwith the antifreeze story …”“I need to nd the vomit,” I said. “If I got rid of the vomit and we exposed more ofher lies …”“We should go through the diary,” Go said. “Seven years of entries? There have to bediscrepancies.”“We asked Rand and Marybeth to go through it, see if anything seemed o to them,”Boney said. “You can guess how that went. I thought Marybeth was going to scratch myeyes out.”“What about Jacqueline Collings, or Tommy O’Hara, or Hilary Handy?” Go said.“They all know the real Amy.
There has to be something there.”Boney shook her head. “Believe me, it’s not enough. They’re all less credible thanAmy. It’s pure public opinion, but right now that’s what the department is looking at:public opinion.”She was right. Jacqueline Collings had popped up on a few cable shows, insisting onher son’s innocence. She always started o steady, but her mother’s love worked againsther: She soon came across as a grieving woman desperate to believe the best of her son,and the more the hosts pitied her, the more she snapped and snarled, and the moreunsympathetic she became. She got written o quickly.
Both Tommy O’Hara and HilaryHandy called me, furious that Amy remained unpunished, determined to tell their story,but no one wanted to hear from two unhinged former anythings. Hold tight, I told them,we’re working on it. Hilary and Tommy and Jacqueline and Boney and Go and I, we’dhave our moment. I told myself I believed it.“What if we at least got Andie?” I asked. “Got her to testify that everywhere Amy hida clue was a place where we’d, you know, had sex? Andie’s credible; people love her.”Andie had reverted to her old cheery self after Amy returned. I know that only fromthe occasional tabloid snapshots.
From these, I know she has been dating a guy her age,a cute, shaggy kid with ear-buds forever dangling from his neck. They look nicetogether, young and healthy. The press adored them. The best headline: Love Finds AndieHardy!, a 1938 Mickey Rooney movie pun only about twenty people would get. I senther a text: I’m sorry. For everything. I didn’t hear back. Good for her. I mean thatsincerely.“Coincidence.” Boney shrugged. “I mean, weird coincidence, but … it’s not impressiveenough to move forward. Not in this climate. You need to get your wife to tell yousomething useful, Nick. You’re our only chance here.”Go slammed down her co ee. “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation,” shesaid.
“Nick, I don’t want you in that house anymore. You’re not an undercover cop, youknow. It’s not your job. You are living with a murderer. Fucking leave. I’m sorry, butwho gives a shit that she killed Desi? I don’t want her to kill you. I mean, someday youburn her grilled cheese, and the next thing you know, my phone’s ringing and you’vetaken an awful fall from the roof or some shit. Leave.”“I can’t. Not yet.
She’ll never really let me go. She likes the game too much.”“Then stop playing it.”I can’t. I’m getting so much better at it. I will stay close to her until I can bring herdown. I’m the only one left who can do it. Someday she’ll slip and tell me something Ican use. A week ago I moved into our bedroom. We don’t have sex, we barely touch, butwe are husband and wife in a marital bed, which appeases Amy for now.
I stroke herhair. I take a strand between my nger and thumb, and I pull it to the end and tug, likeI’m ringing a bell, and we both like that. Which is a problem.We pretend to be in love, and we do the things we like to do when we’re in love, andit feels almost like love sometimes, because we are so perfectly putting ourselvesthrough the paces. Reviving the muscle memory of early romance.
When I forget—I cansometimes brie y forget who my wife is—I actually like hanging out with her. Or the hershe is pretending to be. The fact is, my wife is a murderess who is sometimes really fun.May I give one example? One night I ew in lobster like the old days, and shepretended to chase me with it, and I pretended to hide, and then we both at the sametime made an Annie Hall joke, and it was so perfect, so the way it was supposed to be,that I had to leave the room for a second. My heart was beating in my ears.
I had torepeat my mantra: Amy killed a man, and she will kill you if you are not very, very careful.My wife, the very fun, beautiful murderess, will do me harm if I displease her. I ndmyself jittery in my own house: I will be making a sandwich, standing in the kitchenmidday, licking the peanut butter o the knife, and I will turn and nd Amy in the sameroom with me—those quiet little cat feet—and I will quiver. Me, Nick Dunne, the manwho used to forget so many details, is now the guy who replays conversations to makesure I didn’t o end, to make sure I never hurt her feelings. I write down everythingabout her day, her likes and dislikes, in case she quizzes me. I am a great husbandbecause I am very afraid she may kill me.We’ve never had a conversation about my paranoia, because we’re pretending to bein love and I’m pretending not to be frightened of her.
But she’s made glancing mentionsof it: You know, Nick, you can sleep in bed with me, like, actually sleep. It will be okay. Ipromise. What happened with Desi was an isolated incident. Close your eyes and sleep.But I know I’ll never sleep again. I can’t close my eyes when I’m next to her. It’s likesleeping with a spider.AMY ELLIOTT DUNNEEIGHT WEEKS AFTER THE RETURNNo one has arrested me. The police have stopped questioning. I feel safe.
I will beeven safer very soon.This is how good I feel: Yesterday I came downstairs for breakfast, and the jar thatheld my vomit was sitting on the kitchen counter, empty. Nick—the scrounger—hadgotten rid of that little bit of leverage. I blinked an eye, and then I tossed out the jar.It hardly matters now.Good things are happening.I have a book deal: I am o cially in control of our story. It feels wonderfullysymbolic.
Isn’t that what every marriage is, anyway? Just a lengthy game of he-said,she-said? Well, she is saying, and the world will listen, and Nick will have to smile andagree. I will write him the way I want him to be: romantic and thoughtful and very veryrepentant—about the credit cards and the purchases and the woodshed. If I can’t get himto say it out loud, he’ll say it in my book. Then he’ll come on tour with me and smile andsmile.I’m calling the book simply: Amazing.
Causing great wonder or surprise; astounding.That sums up my story, I think.NICK DUNNENINE WEEKS AFTER THE RETURNI found the vomit. She’d hidden it in the back of the freezer in a jar, inside a box ofBrussels sprouts. The box was covered in icicles; it must have been sitting there formonths. I know it was her own joke with herself: Nick won’t eat his vegetables, Nick nevercleans out the fridge, Nick won’t think to look here.But Nick did.Nick knows how to clean out the refrigerator, it turns out, and Nick even knows howto defrost: I poured all that sick down the drain, and I left the jar on the counter so she’dknow.She tossed it in the garbage. She never said a word about it.Something’s wrong.
I don’t know what it is, but something’s very wrong.My life has begun to feel like an epilogue. Tanner picked up a new case: A Nashvillesinger discovered his wife was cheating, and her body was found the next day in aHardee’s trash bin near their house, a hammer covered with his ngerprints beside her.Tanner is using me as a defense. I know it looks bad, but it also looked bad for Nick Dunne,and you know how that turned out. I could almost feel him winking at me through thecamera lens. He sent the occasional text: U OK? Or: Anything? No, nothing.Boney and Go and I hung out in secret at the Pancake House, where we sifted thedirty sand of Amy’s story, trying to nd something we could use.
We scoured the diary,an elaborate anachronism hunt. It came down to desperate nitpickings like: “She makesa comment here about Darfur, was that on the radar in 2010?” (Yes, we found a 2006newsclip with George Clooney discussing it.) Or my own best worst: “Amy makes a jokein the July 2008 entry about killing a hobo, but I feel like dead-hobo jokes weren’t biguntil 2009.” To which Boney replied: “Pass the syrup, freakshow.”People peeled away, went on with their lives.
Boney stayed. Go stayed.Then something happened. My father nally died. At night, in his sleep. A womanspooned his last meal into his mouth, a woman settled him into bed for his last rest, awoman cleaned him up after he died, and a woman phoned to give me the news.“He was a good man,” she said, dullness with an obligatory injection of empathy.“No, he wasn’t,” I said, and she laughed like she clearly hadn’t in a month.I thought it would make me feel better to have the man vanished from the earth, butI actually felt a massive, frightening hollowness open up in my chest.
I had spent mylife comparing myself to my father, and now he was gone, and there was only Amy leftto bat against. After the small, dusty, lonely service, I didn’t leave with Go, I went homewith Amy, and I clutched her to me. That’s right, I went home with my wife.I have to get out of this house, I thought.
I have to be done with Amy once and for all.Burn us down, so I couldn’t ever go back.Who would I be without you?I had to find out. I had to tell my own story. It was all so clear.The next morning, as Amy was in her study clicking away at the keys, telling theworld her Amazing story, I took my laptop downstairs and stared at the glowing whitescreen.I started on the opening page of my own book.I am a cheating, weak-spined, woman-fearing coward, and I am the hero of your story.Because the woman I cheated on—my wife, Amy Elliott Dunne—is a sociopath and amurderer.Yes.
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