Gone Girl (22 page)

It worked. I began thinking of Andie as an escape, an opportunity. An option. I’d come home to find Amy in a tight ball on the sofa, Amy staring at the wall, silent, never saying the first word to me, always waiting, a perpetual game of icebreaking, a constant mental challenge – what will make Amy happy today? I would think:
Andie wouldn’t do that
. As if I knew Andie.
Andie would laugh at that joke, Andie would like that story
. Andie was a nice, pretty, bosomy Irish girl from my hometown, unassuming and jolly. Andie sat in the front row of my class, and she looked soft, and she looked interested.

When I thought about Andie, my stomach didn’t hurt the way it did with my wife – the constant dread of returning to my own home, where I wasn’t welcome.

I began imagining how it might happen. I began craving her touch – yes, it was like that, just like a lyric from a bad ’80s single – I craved her touch, I craved touch in general, because my wife avoided mine: At home she slipped past me like a fish, sliding just out of grazing distance in the kitchen or the stairwell. We watched TV silently on our two sofa cushions, as separate as if they were life rafts. In bed, she turned away from me, pushed blankets and sheets between us. I once woke up in the night and, knowing she was asleep, pulled aside her halter strap a bit, and pressed my cheek and a palm against her bare shoulder. I couldn’t get back to sleep
that night, I was so disgusted with myself. I got out of bed and masturbated in the shower, picturing Amy, the lusty way she used to look at me, those heavy-lidded moonrise eyes taking me in, making me feel seen. When I was done, I sat down in the bathtub and stared at the drain through the spray. My penis lay pathetically along my left thigh, like some small animal washed ashore. I sat at the bottom of the bathtub, humiliated, trying not to cry.

So it happened. In a strange, sudden snowstorm in early April. Not April of this year, April of
last
year. I was working the bar alone because Go was having a Mom Night; we took turns not working, staying home with our mother and watching bad TV. Our mom was going fast, she wouldn’t last the year, not even close.

I was actually feeling okay right at that moment – my mom and Go were snuggled up at home watching an Annette Funicello beach movie, and The Bar had had a busy, lively night, one of those nights where everyone seemed to have come off a good day. Pretty girls were nice to homely guys. People were buying rounds for strangers just because. It was festive. And then it was the end of the night, time to close, everybody out. I was about to lock the door when Andie flung it wide and stepped in, almost on top of me, and I could smell the light-beer sweetness on her breath, the scent of woodsmoke in her hair. I paused for that jarring moment when you try to process someone you’ve seen in only one setting, put them in a new context. Andie in The Bar. Okay. She laughed a pirate-wench laugh and pushed me back inside.

‘I just had the most fantastically awful date, and you have to have a drink with me.’ Snowflakes gathered in the dark waves of her hair, her sweet scattering of freckles glowed, her cheeks were bright pink, as if someone had double-slapped her. She has this great voice, this fuzzy-duckling voice, that starts out ridiculously cute and ends up completely sexy. ‘Please, Nick, I’ve got to get that bad-date taste out of my mouth.’

I remember us laughing, and thinking what a relief it was to be with a woman and hear her laugh. She was wearing jeans and a cashmere V-neck; she is one of those girls who look better in jeans than a dress. Her face, her body, is casual in the best way. I assumed my position behind the bar, and she slid onto a bar stool, her eyes assessing all the liquor bottles behind me.

‘Whaddya want, lady?’

‘Surprise me,’ she said.

‘Boo,’ I said, the word leaving my lips kiss-puckered.

‘Now surprise me with a drink.’ She leaned forward so her cleavage was leveraged against the bar, her breasts pushed upward. She wore a pendant on a thin gold chain; the pendant slid between her breasts down under her sweater.
Don’t be that guy
, I thought.
The guy who pants over where the pendant ends
.

‘What flavor you feel like?’ I asked.

‘Whatever you give me, I’ll like.’

It was that line that caught me, the simplicity of it. The idea that I could do something and it would make a woman happy, and it would be easy.
Whatever you give me, I’ll like
. I felt an overwhelming wave of relief. And then I knew I didn’t love Amy anymore.

I don’t love my wife anymore
, I thought, turning to grab two tumblers.
Not even a little bit. I am wiped clean of love, I am spotless
. I made my favorite drink: Christmas Morning, hot coffee and cold peppermint schnapps. I had one with her, and when she shivered and laughed – that big whoop of a laugh – I poured us another round. We drank together an hour past closing time, and I mentioned the word
wife
three times, because I was looking at Andie and picturing taking her clothes off. A warning for her, the least I could do:
I have a wife. Do with that what you will
.

She sat in front of me, her chin in her hands, smiling up at me.

‘Walk me home?’ she said. She’d mentioned before how close she lived to downtown, how she needed to stop by The Bar some night and say hello, and did she mention how close she lived to The Bar? My mind had been primed: Many times I’d mentally strolled the few blocks toward the bland brick apartments where she lived. So when I suddenly was out the door, walking her home, it didn’t seem unusual at all – there wasn’t that warning bell that told me:
This is unusual, this is not what we do
.

I walked her home, against the wind, snow flying everywhere, helping her rewrap her red knitted scarf once, twice, and on the third time, I was tucking her in properly and our faces were close, and her cheeks were a merry holiday-sledding pink, and it was the kind of thing that could never have happened in another hundred nights, but that night it was possible. The conversation, the booze, the storm, the scarf.

We grabbed each other at the same time, me pushing her up against a tree for better leverage, the spindly branches dumping a pile of snow on us, a stunning, comical moment that only made me more insistent on touching her, touching everything at once, one hand up inside her sweater, the other between her legs. And her letting me.

She pulled back from me, her teeth chattering. ‘Come up with me.’

I paused.

‘Come up with me,’ she said again. ‘I want to be with you.’

The sex wasn’t that great, not the first time. We were two bodies used to different rhythms, never quite getting the hang of each other, and it had been so long since I’d been inside a woman, I came first, quickly, and kept moving, thirty crucial seconds as I began wilting inside her, just long enough to get her taken care of before I went entirely slack.

So it was nice but disappointing, anticlimactic, the way girls must feel when they give up their virginity:
That was what all the fuss was about?
But I liked how she wrapped herself around me, and I liked that she was as soft as I’d imagined. New skin.
Young
, I thought disgracefully, picturing Amy and her constant lotioning, sitting in bed and slapping away at herself angrily.

I went into Andie’s bathroom, took a piss, looked at myself in the mirror, and made myself say it:
You are a cheater. You have failed one of the most basic male tests. You are not a good man
. And when that didn’t bother me, I thought:
You’re
really
not a good man
.

The horrifying thing was, if the sex had been outrageously mind-blowing, that might have been my sole indiscretion. But it was only decent, and now I was a cheater, and I couldn’t ruin my record of fidelity on something merely average. So I knew there would be a next. I didn’t promise myself never again. And then the next was very, very good, and the next after that was great. Soon Andie became a physical counterpoint to all things Amy. She laughed with me and made me laugh, she didn’t immediately contradict me or second-guess me. She never scowled at me. She was easy. It was all so fucking easy. And I thought:
Love makes you want to be a better man – right, right. But maybe love, real love, also gives you permission to just be the man you are
.

I was going to tell Amy. I knew it had to happen. I continued not to tell Amy, for months and months. And then more months. Most of it was cowardice. I couldn’t bear to have the conversation, to have to
explain
myself. I couldn’t imagine having to discuss the divorce with Rand and Marybeth, as they certainly would insert themselves into the fray. But part of it, in truth, was my strong streak of pragmatism – it was almost grotesque, how practical (self-serving?) I could be. I hadn’t asked Amy for a divorce, in part,
because Amy’s money had financed The Bar. She basically owned it, she would certainly take it back. And I couldn’t bear to look at my twin trying to be brave as she lost another couple years of her life. So I let myself drift on in the miserable situation, assuming that at some point Amy would take charge, Amy would demand a divorce, and then I would get to be the good guy.

This desire – to escape the situation without blame – was despicable. The more despicable I became, the more I craved Andie, who knew that I wasn’t as bad as I seemed, if my story were published in the paper for strangers to read.
Amy will divorce you
, I kept thinking.
She can’t let it linger on much longer
. But as spring faded away and summer came, then fall, then winter, and I became a cheating man of all seasons – a cheat with a pleasantly impatient mistress – it became clear that something would have to be done.

‘I mean, I love you, Nick,’ Andie said, here, surreally, on my sister’s sofa. ‘No matter what happens. I don’t really know what else to say, I feel pretty …’ She threw her hands up. ‘Stupid.’

‘Don’t feel stupid,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what to say either. There’s nothing to say.’

‘You can say that you love me no matter what happens.’

I thought:
I can’t say that out loud anymore
. I’d said it once or twice, a spitty mumble against her neck, homesick for something. But the words were out there, and so was a lot more. I thought then of the trail we’d left, our busy, semi-hidden love affair that I hadn’t worried enough about. If her building had a security camera, I was on it. I’d bought a disposable phone just for her calls, but those voice mails and texts went to her very permanent cell. I’d written her a dirty valentine that I could already see splashed across the news, me rhyming
besot
with
twat
. And more: Andie was twenty-three. I assumed my words, voice, even photos of me were captured on various electronica. I’d flipped through the photos on her phone one night, jealous, possessive, curious, and seen plenty of shots of an ex or two smiling proudly in her bed, and I assumed at one point I’d join the club – I kind of
wanted
to join the club – and for some reason that hadn’t worried me, even though it could be downloaded and sent to a million people in the space of a vengeful second.

‘This is an extremely weird situation, Andie. I just need you to be patient.’

She pulled back from me. ‘You can’t say you love me, no matter what happens?’

‘I love you, Andie. I do.’ I held her eyes. Saying
I love you
was dangerous right now, but so was not saying it.

‘Fuck me, then,’ she whispered. She began tugging at my belt.

‘We have to be real careful right now. I … It’s a bad, bad place for me if the police find out about us. It looks beyond bad.’

‘That’s what you’re worried about?’

‘I’m a man with a missing wife and a secret … girlfriend. Yeah, it looks bad. It looks criminal.’

‘That makes it sound sleazy.’ Her breasts were still out.

‘People don’t know us, Andie. They
will
think it’s sleazy.’

‘God, it’s like some bad noir movie.’

I smiled. I’d introduced Andie to noir – to Bogart and
The Big Sleep, Double Indemnity
, all the classics. It was one of the things I liked best about us, that I could show her things.

‘Why don’t we just tell the police?’ she said. ‘Wouldn’t that be better—’

‘No. Andie, don’t even think about it. No.’

‘They’re going to find out—’

‘Why? Why would they? Have you told anyone about us, sweetheart?’

She gave me a twitchy look. I felt bad: This was not how she thought the night would go. She had been excited to see me, she had been imagining a lusty reunion, physical reassurance, and I was busy covering my ass.

‘Sweetheart, I’m sorry, I just need to know,’ I said.

‘Not by name.’

‘What do you mean, not by name?’

‘I mean,’ she said, pulling up her dress finally, ‘my friends, my mom, they know I’m seeing someone, but not by name.’

‘And not by any kind of description, right?’ I said it more urgently than I wanted to, feeling like I was holding up a collapsing ceiling. ‘Two people know about this, Andie. You and me. If you help me, if you love me, it will just be us knowing, and then the police will never find out.’

She traced a finger along my jawline. ‘And what if – if they never find Amy?’

‘You and I, Andie, we’ll be together no matter what happens. But
only
if we’re careful. If we’re not careful, it’s possible – It looks bad enough that I could go to prison.’

‘Maybe she ran off with someone,’ she said, leaning her cheek against my shoulder. ‘Maybe—’

I could feel her girl-brain buzzing, turning Amy’s disappearance into a frothy, scandalous romance, ignoring any reality that didn’t suit the narrative.

‘She didn’t run off. It’s much more serious than that.’ I put a finger under her chin so she looked at me. ‘Andie? I need you to take this very seriously, okay?’

‘Of course I’m taking it seriously. But I need to be able to talk to you more often. To see you. I’m freaking out, Nick.’

‘We just need to sit tight for now.’ I gripped both her shoulders so she had to look at me. ‘My wife is missing, Andie.’