Gone Girl

grace and good cheer, asking everyone if I can get them anything else, complimenting women on ambrosia salads and crab dips and pickle slices wrapped in cream cheese wrapped in salami.

Nick’s dad arrives with Go. They stand silently on the doorstep, Midwest Gothic, Bill Dunne wiry and still handsome, a tiny Band-Aid on his forehead, Go grim-faced, her hair in barrettes, her eyes averted from her father.

‘Nick,’ Bill Dunne says, shaking his hand, and he steps inside, frowning at me. Go follows, grabs Nick, and pulls him back behind the door, whispering, ‘I have no idea where he is right now, headwise. Like if he’s having a bad day or if he’s just being a jackass. No idea.’

‘Okay, okay. Don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye on him.’

Go shrugs pissily.

‘I’m serious, Go. Grab a beer and take a break. You are relieved of Dad duty for the next hour.’

I think: If that had been me, he’d complain that I was being too sensitive.

The older women keep swirling around me, telling me how Maureen has always said what a wonderful couple Nick and I are and she is right, we are clearly made for each other.

I prefer these well-meant cliche´s to the talk we heard before we got married. Marriage is compromise and hard work, and then more hard work and communication and compromise. And then work. Abandon all hope, ye who enter.

The engagement party back in New York was the worst for this, all the guests hot with wine and resentment, as if every set of spouses had gotten into an argument on the way to the club. Or they remembered some argument. Like Binks. Binks Moriarty, my mom’s best friend’s eighty-eight-year-old mother, stopped me at the bar – bellowed, ‘Amy! I must talk to you!’ in an emergency-room voice. She twisted her precious rings on overknuckled fingers – twist, turn, creak – and fondled my arm (that old-person grope – cold fingers coveting your nice, soft, warm, new skin), and then Binks told me how her late husband of sixty-three years had trouble ‘keeping it in his pants.’ Binks said this with one of those I’m almost dead, I can say this kind of stuff grins and cataract-clouded eyes. ‘He just couldn’t keep it in his pants,’ the old lady said urgently, her hand chilling my arm in a death grip. ‘But he loved me more than any of them. I know it, and you know it.’ The moral to the story being: Mr Binks was a cheating dickweasel, but, you know, marriage is compromise.

I retreated quickly and began circulating through the crowd, smiling at a series of wrinkled faces, that baggy, exhausted, disappointed look that people get in middle age, and all the faces were like that. Most of them were also drunk, dancing steps from their youth – swaying to country-club funk – and that seemed even worse. I was making my way to the French windows for some air, and a hand squeezed my arm. Nick’s mom, Mama Maureen, with her big black laser eyes, her eager pug-dog face. Thrusting a wad of goat cheese and crackers into her mouth, Maureen managed to say: ‘It’s not easy, pairing yourself off with someone forever. It’s an admirable thing, and I’m glad you’re both doing it, but, boy-oh-girl-oh, there will be days you wish you’d never done it. And those will be the good times, when it’s only days of regret and not months.’ I must have looked shocked – I was definitely shocked – because she said quickly: ‘But then you have good times, too. I know you will. You two. A lot of good times. So just … forgive me, sweetheart, what I said before. I’m just being a silly old divorced lady. Oh, mother of pearl, I think I had too much wine.’ And she fluttered a goodbye at me and scampered away through all the other disappointed couples.

‘You’re not supposed to be here,’ Bill Dunne was suddenly saying, and he was saying it to me. ‘Why are you here? You’re not allowed here.’

‘I’m Amy,’ I say, touching his arm as if that might wake him. Bill has always liked me; even if he could think of nothing to say to me, I could tell he liked me, the way he watched me like I was a rare bird. Now he is scowling, thrusting his chest toward me, a caricature of a young sailor ready to brawl. A few feet away, Go sets down her food and gets ready to move toward us, quietly, like she is trying to catch a fly.

‘Why are you in our house?’ Bill Dunne says, his mouth grimacing. ‘You’ve got some nerve, lady.’

‘Nick?’ Go calls behind her, not loudly but urgently.

‘Got it,’ Nick says, appearing. ‘Hey, Dad, this is my wife, Amy. Remember Amy? We moved back home so we could see you more. This is our new house.’

Nick glares at me: I was the one who insisted we invite his dad.

‘All I’m saying, Nick,’ Bill Dunne says, pointing now, jabbing an index finger toward my face, the party going hushed, several men moving slowly, cautiously, in from the other room, their hands twitching, ready to move, ‘is she doesn’t belong here. Little bitch thinks she can do whatever she wants.’

Mama Mo swoops in then, her arm around her ex-husband, always, always rising to the occasion. ‘Of course she belongs here, Bill. It’s her house. She’s your son’s wife. Remember?’

‘I want her out of here, do you understand me, Maureen?’ He shrugs her off and starts moving toward me again. ‘Dumb bitch. Dumb bitch.’

It’s unclear if he means me or Maureen, but then he looks at me and tightens his lips. ‘She doesn’t belong here.’

‘I’ll go,’ I say, and turn away, walk straight out the door, into the rain. From the mouths of Alzheimer’s patients, I think, trying to make light. I walk a loop around the neighborhood, waiting for Nick to appear, to guide me back to our house. The rain spackles me gently, dampening me. I really believe Nick will come after me. I turn toward the house and see only a closed door.





NICK DUNNE

FOUR DAYS GONE

Rand and I sat in the vacant Find Amy Dunne headquarters at five in the morning, drinking coffee while we waited for the cops to check out Lonnie. Amy stared at us from her poster perch on the wall. Her photo looked distressed.

‘I just don’t understand why she wouldn’t say something to you if she was afraid,’ Rand said. ‘Why wouldn’t she tell you?’

Amy had come to the mall to buy a gun on Valentine’s Day, of all days, that’s what our friend Lonnie had said. She was a little abashed, a little nervous: Maybe I’m being silly, but … I just really think I need a gun. Mostly, though, she was scared. Someone was unnerving her, she told Lonnie. She gave no more details, but when he asked her what kind of gun she wanted, she said: One that stops someone fast. He told her to come back in a few days, and she did. He hadn’t been able to get her one (‘It’s not really my bag, man’), but now he wished he had. He remembered her well; over the months, he’d wondered how she was now and then, this sweet blonde with the fearful face, trying to get a gun on Valentine’s Day.

‘Who would she be afraid of?’ Rand asked.

‘Tell me about Desi again, Rand,’ I said. ‘Did you ever meet him?’

‘He came to the house a few times.’ Rand frowned, remembering. ‘He was a nice-looking kid, very solicitous of Amy – treated her like a princess. But I just never liked him. Even when things were good with them – young love, Amy’s first love – even then I disliked him. He was very rude to me, inexplicably so. Very possessive of Amy, arms around her at all times. I found it strange, very strange, that he wouldn’t try to be nice to us. Most young men want to get in good with the parents.’

‘I wanted to.’

‘And you did!’ He smiled. ‘You were just the right amount of nervous, it was very sweet. Desi wasn’t anything but nasty.’

‘Desi’s less than an hour out of town.’

‘True. And Hilary Handy?’ Rand said, rubbing his eyes. ‘I don’t want to be sexist here – she was scarier than Desi. Because that Lonnie guy at the mall, he didn’t say Amy was afraid of a man.’

‘No, he just said she was afraid,’ I said. ‘There is that Noelle Hawthorne girl – the one who lives near us. She told the police she was best friends with Amy when I know she wasn’t. They weren’t even friends. Her husband says she’s been in hysterics. That she was looking at pictures of Amy, crying. At the time I thought they were Internet photos, but … what if they were actual photos she had of Amy? What if she was stalking Amy?’

‘She tried to talk with me when I was a little busy yesterday,’ Rand said. ‘She quoted some Amazing Amy stuff at me. Amazing Amy and the Best Friend War, actually. “Best friends are the people who know us best.”’

‘Sounds like Hilary,’ I said. ‘All grown up.’

We met Boney and Gilpin just after seven a.m. at an IHOP out along the highway for a showdown: It was ridiculous that we were doing their job for them. It was insane that we were the ones discovering leads. It was time to call in the FBI if the local cops couldn’t handle it.

A plump, amber-eyed waitress took our orders, poured us coffee, and, clearly recognizing me, lingered within eavesdropping distance until Gilpin scatted her away. She was like a determined housefly, though. Between drink refills and dispensing of utensils and the magically quick arrival of our food, our entire harangue came in limp bursts. This is unacceptable … no more coffee, thanks … it’s unbelievable that … uh, sure, rye is fine …

Before we were done, Boney interrupted. ‘I understand, guys, it’s natural to want to feel involved. But what you did was dangerous. You have got to let us handle this kind of thing.’

‘That’s just it, though, you aren’t handling it,’ I said. ‘You’d never have gotten this information, about the gun, if we didn’t go out there last night. What did Lonnie say when you talked to him?’

‘Same thing you said he said,’ Gilpin said. ‘Amy wanted to buy a gun, she was scared.’

‘You don’t seem that impressed by this information,’ I snapped. ‘Do you think he was lying?’

‘We don’t think he was lying,’ Boney said. ‘There’s no reason for the guy to invite police attention to himself. He seemed very struck by your wife. Very … I don’t know, rattled that this had happened to her. He remembered specific details. Nick, he said she was wearing a green scarf that day. You know, not a winter scarf but a fashion-statement scarf.’ She made fluttery moves with her fingers to show she thought fashion to be childish, unworthy of her attention. ‘Emerald green. Ring a bell?’

I nodded. ‘She has one she wears with blue jeans a lot.’

‘And a pin on her jacket – a gold cursive A?’

‘Yes.’

Boney shrugged: Well, that settles it.

‘You don’t think he might have been so struck by her that he … kidnapped her?’ I asked.

‘He has an alibi. Rock-solid,’ Boney said, giving me a pointed look. ‘To tell the truth, we’ve begun to look for … a different kind of motive.’

‘Something more … personal,’ Gilpin added. He looked dubiously at his pancakes, topped with strawberries and puffs of whipped cream. He began scraping them to the side of his plate.

‘More personal,’ I said. ‘So does that mean you’re finally going to talk to Desi Collings, or Hilary Handy? Or do I need to?’ I had, in fact, promised Marybeth I’d go today.

‘Sure, we will,’ Boney said. She had the placating tone of a girl promising her pesky mom to eat better. ‘We doubt it’s a lead – but we’ll talk to them.’

‘Well, great, thanks for doing your job, kind of,’ I said. ‘And what about Noelle Hawthorne? If you want someone close to home, she’s right in our complex, and she seems a little obsessed with Amy.’

‘I know, she’s called us, and she’s on our list.’ Gilpin nodded. ‘Today.’

‘Good. What else are you doing?’

‘Nick, we’d actually like you to make some time for us, let us pick your brain a bit more,’ Boney said. ‘Spouses often know more than they realize. We’d like you to think a bit more about the argument – that barnburner your neighbor Mrs., uh, Teverer overheard you and Amy having the night before she went missing.’

Rand’s head jerked toward me.

Jan Teverer, the Christian casserole lady who wouldn’t meet my eye anymore.

‘I mean, could it have been because – I know this is hard to hear, Mr Elliott – because Amy was under the influence of something?’ Boney asked. Innocent eyes. ‘I mean, maybe she has had contact with less savory elements in town. There are plenty of other drug dealers. Maybe she got in over her head, and that’s why she wanted a gun. There’s got to be a reason she wants a gun for protection and doesn’t tell her husband. And Nick, we’d like you to think harder about where you were between that time – the time of the argument, about eleven p.m., the last anyone heard Amy’s voice—’

‘Besides me.’

‘Besides you – and noon, when you arrived at your bar. If you were out and about in this town, driving to the beach, hanging around the dock area, someone must have seen you. Even if it was someone just, you know, walking his dog. If you can help us, I think that would be really …’

‘Helpful,’ Gilpin finished. He speared a strawberry.

They both watched me attentively, congenially. ‘It’d be super-helpful, Nick,’ Gilpin repeated more pleasantly. First time I’d heard about the argument – that they knew about it – and they chose to tell me in front of Rand – and they chose to pretend it wasn’t a gotcha.

‘Sure thing,’ I said.

‘You mind telling us what it was about?’ Boney asked. ‘The argument?’

‘What did Mrs Teverer tell you it was about?’

‘I hate to take her word when I got you right here.’ She poured some cream into her coffee.

‘It was such a nothing argument,’ I began. ‘That’s why I never mentioned it. Just both of us scrapping at each other, the way couples do sometimes.’

Rand looked at me as if he had no clue what I was talking about: Scrapping? What is this scrapping of which you speak?

‘It was just – about dinner,’ I lied. ‘About what we’d do for dinner for our anniversary. You know, Amy is a traditionalist about these things—’

‘The lobster!’ Rand interrupted. He turned to the cops. ‘Amy cooks lobster every year for Nick.’

‘Right. But there’s nowhere to get lobster in this town, not alive, from the tank, so she was frustrated. I had the Houston’s reservation—’

‘I thought you said you didn’t have a Houston’s reservation.’ Rand frowned.

‘Well, yes, sorry, I’m getting confused. I just had the idea of the Houston’s reservation. But I really should have just arranged to have some lobster flown in.’

The cops, each of them, raised an accidental eyebrow. How very fancy.

‘It’s not that expensive to do. Anyway, we were at this rotten loggerheads, and it was one of those arguments that got bigger than it should have.’ I took a bite of my pancakes. I could feel the heat rushing from under my collar. ‘We were laughing about it within the hour.’

‘Hunh’ was all Boney said.

‘And where are you on the treasure hunt?’ Gilpin asked.

I stood up, put down some money, ready to go. I wasn’t the one who was supposed to be playing defense here. ‘Nowhere, not right yet – it’s hard to think clearly with so much going on.’

‘Okay,’ Gilpin said. ‘It’s less likely the treasure hunt is an angle, now that we know she was already feeling threatened months ago. But keep me in the loop anyway, okay?’

We all shuffled out into the heat. As Rand and I got into our car, Boney called out, ‘Hey, is Amy still a two, Nick?’

I frowned at her.

‘A size two?’ she repeated.

‘Yes, she is, I think,’ I said. ‘Yes. She is.’

Boney made a face that said, Hmmmm, and got in her car.

‘What do you think that was about?’ Rand asked.

‘Those two, who knows?’

We remained silent for most of the way to the hotel, Rand staring out the window at the rows of fast-food restaurants blinking by, me thinking about my lie – my lies. We had to circle to find a space at the Days Inn; the payroll convention was apparently a hot ticket.

‘You know, it’s funny, how provincial I am, lifetime New Yorker,’ Rand said, fingers on the door handle. ‘When Amy talked about moving back here, back along the Ole Mississippi River, with you, I pictured … green, farmland, apple trees, and those great old red barns. I have to tell you, it’s really quite ugly here.’ He laughed. ‘I can’t think of a single thing of beauty in this whole town. Except for my daughter.’

He got out and strode quickly toward the hotel, and I didn’t try to catch up. I entered the headquarters a few minutes behind him, took a seat at a secluded table toward the back of the room. I needed to complete the treasure hunt before the clues disappeared, figure out where Amy had been taking me. After a few hours’ stint here, I’d deal with the third clue. In the meantime, I dialed.

‘Yeah,’ came an impatient voice. A baby was crying in the background. I could hear the woman blow the hair off her face.

‘Hi, is this – is this Hilary Handy?’

She hung up. I phoned back.

‘Hello?’

‘Hi there. I think we got cut off before.’

‘Would you put this number on your do not call list—’

‘Hilary, I’m not selling anything, I’m calling about Amy Dunne – Amy Elliott.’

Silence. The baby squawked again, a mewl that wavered dangerously between laughter and tantrum.

‘What about her?’

‘I don’t know if you’ve seen this on TV, but she’s gone missing. She went missing on July fifth under potentially violent circumstances.’

‘Oh. I’m sorry.’

‘I’m Nick Dunne, her husband. I’ve just been calling old friends of hers.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘I wondered if you’d had any contact with her. Recently.’

She breathed into the phone, three deep breaths. ‘Is this because of that, that bullshit back in high school?’ Farther in the background, a child’s wheedling voice yelled out, ‘Moo-oom, I nee-eed you.’

‘In a minute, Jack,’ she called into the void behind her. Then returned to me with a bright red voice: ‘Is it? Is that why you’re calling me? Because that was twenty goddamn years ago. More.’

‘I know. I know. Look, I have to ask. I’d be an asshole not to ask.’

‘Jesus fucking Christ. I’m a mother of three kids now. I haven’t talked to Amy since high school. I learned my lesson. If I saw her on the street, I’d run the other way.’ The baby howled. ‘I gotta go.’

‘Just real quick, Hilary—’

She hung up, and immediately, my disposable vibrated. I ignored it. I had to find a place to stow the damn thing.

I could feel the presence of someone, a woman, near me, but I didn’t look up, hoping she would go away.

‘It’s not even noon, and you already look like you’ve had a full day, poor baby.’

Shawna Kelly. She had her hair pulled up in a high bubblegum-girl ponytail. She aimed glossed lips at me in a sympathetic pout. ‘You ready for some of my Frito pie?’ She was bearing a casserole dish, holding it just below her breasts, the saran wrap dappled with sweat. She said the words like she was the star of some ’80s hair-rock video: You want summa my pie?

‘Big breakfast. Thanks, though. That’s really kind of you.’

Instead of going away, she sat down. Under a turquoise tennis skirt, her legs were lotioned so well they reflected. She kicked me with the toe of an unblemished Tretorn. ‘You sleeping, sweetie?’

‘I’m holding up.’

‘You’ve got to sleep, Nick. You’re no good to anyone if you’re exhausted.’

‘I might leave in a little bit, see if I can grab a few hours.’

‘I think you should. I really do.’

I felt a sudden keen gratitude to her. It was my mama’s-boy attitude, rising up. Dangerous. Crush it, Nick.

I waited for her to go. She needed to go – people were beginning to watch us.

‘If you want, I can drive you home right now,’ she said. ‘A nap might be just the thing for you.’

She reached out to touch my knee, and I felt a burst of rage that she didn’t realize she needed to go. Leave the casserole, you clingy groupie whore, and go. Daddy’s-boy attitude, rising up. Just as bad.

‘Why don’t you check in with Marybeth?’ I said brusquely, and pointed to my mother-in-law by the Xerox, making endless copies of Amy’s photo.

‘Okay.’ She lingered, so I began ignoring her outright. ‘I’ll leave you to it, then. Hope you like the pie.’

The dismissal had stung her, I could tell, because she made no eye contact as she left, just turned and sauntered off. I felt bad, debated apologizing, making nice. Do not go after that woman, I ordered myself.

‘Any news?’ It was Noelle Hawthorne, entering the same space Shawna had just vacated. She was younger than Shawna but seemed older – a plump body with dour, wide-spaced mounds for breasts. A frown on her face.

‘Not so far.’

‘You sure seem to be handling it all okay.’