flynn_gillian_gone_girl (1) (858987), страница 9
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We’ll get slowly lazydrunk on good Scotch, Nick’s favorite. I’ll give him his present—the monogrammedstationery he’s been wanting from Crane & Co. with the clean sans-serif font set inhunter green, on the thick creamy stock that will hold lush ink and his writer’s words.Stationery for a writer, and a writer’s wife who’s maybe angling for a love letter or two.Then maybe we’ll have sex again.
And a late-night burger. And more Scotch. Voilà:happiest couple on the block! And they say marriage is such hard work.NICK DUNNETHE NIGHT OFBoney and Gilpin moved our interview to the police station, which looks like afailing community bank. They left me alone in a little room for forty minutes, mewilling myself not to move. To pretend to be calm is to be calm, in a way. I slouchedover the table, put my chin on my arm. Waited.“Do you want to call Amy’s parents?” Boney had asked.“I don’t want to panic them,” I said.
“If we don’t hear from her in an hour, I’ll call.”We’d done three rounds of that conversation.Finally, the cops came in and sat at the table across from me. I fought the urge tolaugh at how much it felt like a TV show. This was the same room I’d seen sur ngthrough late-night cable for the past ten years, and the two cops—weary, intense—actedlike the stars. Totally fake. Epcot Police Station. Boney was even holding a paper co eecup and a manila folder that looked like a prop. Cop prop.
I felt giddy, felt for amoment we were all pretend people: Let’s play the Missing Wife game!“You okay there, Nick?” Boney asked.“I’m okay, why?”“You’re smiling.”The giddiness slid to the tiled floor. “I’m sorry, it’s all just—”“I know,” Boney said, giving me a look that was like a hand pat. “It’s too strange, Iknow.” She cleared her throat. “First of all, we want to make sure you’re comfortablehere. You need anything, just let us know. The more information you can give us rightnow, the better, but you can leave at any time, that’s not a problem either.”“Whatever you need.”“Okay, great, thank you,” she said. “Um, okay. I want to get the annoying stu outof the way rst. The crap stu .
If your wife was indeed abducted—and we don’t knowthat, but if it comes to that—we want to catch the guy, and when we catch the guy, wewant to nail him, hard. No way out. No wiggle room.”“Right.”“So we have to rule you out real quick, real easy. So the guy can’t come back and saywe didn’t rule you out, you know what I mean?”I nodded mechanically. I didn’t really know what she meant, but I wanted to seem ascooperative as possible. “Whatever you need.”“We don’t want to freak you out,” Gilpin added. “We just want to cover all thebases.”“Fine by me.” It’s always the husband, I thought.
Everyone knows it’s always thehusband, so why can’t they just say it: We suspect you because you are the husband, and it’salways the husband. Just watch Dateline.“Okay, great, Nick,” Boney said. “First let’s get a swab of the inside of your cheek sowe can rule out all of the DNA in the house that isn’t yours. Would that be okay?”“Sure.”“I’d also like to take a quick sweep of your hands for gun shot residue.
Again, just incase—”“Wait, wait, wait. Have you found something that makes you think my wife was—”“Nonono, Nick,” Gilpin interrupted. He pulled a chair up to the table and sat on itbackward. I wondered if cops actually did that. Or did some clever actor do that, andthen cops began doing it because they’d seen the actors playing cops do that and itlooked cool?“It’s just smart protocol,” Gilpin continued. “We try to cover every base: Check yourhands, get a swab, and if we could check out your car too …”“Of course. Like I said, whatever you need.”“Thank you, Nick. I really appreciate it. Sometimes guys, they make things hard forus just because they can.”I was exactly the opposite.
My father had infused my childhood with unspokenblame; he was the kind of man who skulked around looking for things to be angry at.This had turned Go defensive and extremely unlikely to take unwarranted shit. It hadturned me into a knee-jerk suckup to authority. Mom, Dad, teachers: Whatever makesyour job easier, sir or madam. I craved a constant stream of approval. “You’d literally lie,cheat, and steal—hell, kill—to convince people you are a good guy,” Go once said.
Wewere in line for knishes at Yonah Schimmel’s, not far from Go’s old New York apartment—that’s how well I remember the moment—and I lost my appetite because it was socompletely true and I’d never realized it, and even as she was saying it, I thought: I willnever forget this, this is one of those moments that will be lodged in my brain forever.We made small talk, the cops and I, about the July Fourth reworks and theweather, while my hands were tested for gunshot residue and the slick inside of mycheek was cotton-tipped. Pretending it was normal, a trip to the dentist.When it was done, Boney put another cup of co ee in front of me, squeezed myshoulder. “I’m sorry about that.
Worst part of the job. You think you’re up to a fewquestions now? It’d really help us.”“Yes, definitely, fire away.”She placed a slim digital tape recorder on the table in front of me. “You mind? Thisway you won’t have to answer the same questions over and over and over …” Shewanted to tape me so I’d be nailed to one story. I should call a lawyer, I thought, but onlyguilty people need lawyers, so I nodded: No problem.“So: Amy,” Boney said. “You two been living here how long?”“Just about two years.”“And she’s originally from New York.
City.”“Yes.”“She work, got a job?” Gilpin said.“No. She used to write personality quizzes.”The detectives swapped a look: Quizzes?“For teen magazines, women’s magazines,” I said. “You know: ‘Are you the jealoustype? Take our quiz and nd out! Do guys nd you too intimidating? Take our quiz andfind out!’ ”“Very cool, I love those,” Boney said. “I didn’t know that was an actual job. Writingthose. Like, a career.”“Well, it’s not. Anymore. The Internet is packed with quizzes for free. Amy’s weresmarter—she had a master’s in psychology—has a master’s in psychology.” I gu aweduncomfortably at my gaffe.
“But smart can’t beat free.”“Then what?”I shrugged. “Then we moved back here. She’s just kind of staying at home right now.”“Oh! You guys got kids, then?” Boney chirped, as if she had discovered good news.“No.”“Oh. So then what does she do most days?”That was my question too. Amy was once a woman who did a little of everything, allthe time.
When we moved in together, she’d made an intense study of French cooking,displaying hyper-quick knife skills and an inspired boeuf bourguignon. For her thirtyfourth birthday, we ew to Barcelona, and she stunned me by rolling o trills ofconversational Spanish, learned in months of secret lessons. My wife had a brilliant,popping brain, a greedy curiosity. But her obsessions tended to be fueled bycompetition: She needed to dazzle men and jealous-ify women: Of course Amy can cookFrench cuisine and speak uent Spanish and garden and knit and run marathons and daytrade stocks and y a plane and look like a runway model doing it. She needed to beAmazing Amy, all the time.
Here in Missouri, the women shop at Target, they makediligent, comforting meals, they laugh about how little high school Spanish theyremember. Competition doesn’t interest them. Amy’s relentless achieving is greeted withopen-palmed acceptance and maybe a bit of pity. It was about the worst outcomepossible for my competitive wife: a town of contented also-rans.“She has a lot of hobbies,” I said.“Anything worrying you?” Boney asked, looking worried. “You’re not concernedabout drugs or drinking? I’m not speaking ill of your wife.
A lot of housewives, morethan you’d guess, they pass the day that way. The days, they get long when you’re byyourself. And if the drinking turns to drugs—and I’m not talking heroin but evenprescription painkillers—well, there are some pretty awful characters selling aroundhere right now.”“The drug trade has gotten bad,” Gilpin said. “We’ve had a bunch of police layo s—one-fifth of the force, and we were tight to begin with. I mean, it’s bad, we’re overrun.”“Had a housewife, nice lady, get a tooth knocked out last month over someOxyContin,” Boney prompted.“No, Amy might have a glass of wine or something, but not drugs.”Boney eyed me; this was clearly not the answer she wanted. “She have some goodfriends here? We’d like to call some of them, just make sure.
No o ense. Sometimes aspouse is the last to know when drugs are involved. People get ashamed, especiallywomen.”Friends. In New York, Amy made and shed friends weekly; they were like herprojects. She’d get intensely excited about them: Paula who gave her singing lessons andhad a wicked good voice (Amy went to boarding school in Massachusetts; I loved thevery occasional times she got all New England on me: wicked good); Jessie from thefashion-design course. But then I’d ask about Jessie or Paula a month later, and Amywould look at me like I was making up words.Then there were the men who were always rattling behind Amy, eager to do thehusbandly things that her husband failed to do.
Fix a chair leg, hunt down her favoriteimported Asian tea. Men who she swore were her friends, just good friends. Amy keptthem at exactly an arm’s distance—far enough away that I couldn’t get too annoyed,close enough that she could crook a finger and they’d do her bidding.In Missouri … good God, I really didn’t know. It only occurred to me just then. Youtruly are an asshole, I thought.
Two years we’d been here, and after the initial urry ofmeet-and-greets, those manic rst months, Amy had no one she regularly saw. She hadmy mom, who was now dead, and me—and our main form of conversation was attackand rebuttal. When we’d been back home for a year, I’d asked her faux gallantly: “Andhow are you liking North Carthage, Mrs. Dunne?”“New Carthage, you mean?” she’d replied. I refused to ask her the reference, but Iknew it was an insult.“She has a few good friends, but they’re mostly back east.”“Her folks?”“They live in New York. City.”“And you still haven’t called any of these people?” Boney asked, a bemused smile onher face.“I’ve been doing everything else you’ve been asking me to do.
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