Gone Girl

it’s free.
    ‘Where do you get all the fish?’ I ask him.
    ‘At the getting place,’ he says.
    Dorothy, who works the front desk and has already taken a liking to me, brings tomatoes from her garden. I eat the tomatoes that smell like the earth and the fish that smells like the lake. I think that by next year, Nick will be locked away in a place that smells only of the inside. Fabricated odors: deodorant and old shoes and starchy foods, stale mattresses. His worst fear, his own personal panic dream: He finds himself in jail, realizing he did nothing wrong but unable to prove it. Nick’s nightmares have always been about being wronged, about being trapped, a victim of forces beyond his control.
    He always gets up after these dreams, paces around the house, then puts on clothes and goes outside, wanders along the roads near our house, into a park – a Missouri park, a New York park – going wherever he wants. He is a man of the outdoors, if he is not exactly outdoorsy. He’s not a hiker, a camper, he doesn’t know how to make fires. He wouldn’t know how to catch fish and present them to me. But he likes the option, he likes the choice. He wants to know he can go outside, even if he chooses instead to sit on the couch and watch cage fighting for three hours.
    I do wonder about the little slut. Andie. I thought she’d last exactly three days. Then she wouldn’t be able to resist sharing . I know she likes to share because I’m one of her friends on Facebook – my profile name is invented (Madeleine Elster, ha!), my photo is stolen from a popup ad for mortgages (blond, smiling,benefiting from historically low interest rates). Four months ago, Madeleine randomly asked to be Andie’s friend, and Andie, like a hapless puppy, accepted, so I know the little girl fairly well, along with all her minutiae-enthralled friends, who take many naps and love Greek yogurt and pinot grigio and enjoy sharing that with each other. Andie is a good girl, meaning she doesn’t post photos of herself ‘partying,’ and she never posts lascivious messages. Which is unfortunate. When she’s exposed as Nick’s girlfriend, I’d prefer the media find photos of her doing shots or kissing girls or flashing her thong; this would more easily cement her as the homewrecker she is.
    Homewrecker. My home was disheveled but not yet wrecked when she first started kissing my husband, reaching inside his trousers, slipping into bed with him. Taking his cock in her mouth, all the way to the root so he feels extra big as she gags. Taking it in her ass, deep. Taking cum shots to the face and tits, then licking it off, yum . Taking, definitely taking. Her type would. They’ve been together for over a year. Every holiday. I went through his credit-card statements (the real ones) to see what he got her for Christmas, but he’s been shockingly careful. I wonder what it feels like to be a woman whose Christmas present must be bought in cash. Liberating. Being an undocumented girl means being the girl who doesn’t have to call the plumber or listen to gripes about work or remind and remind him to pick up some goddamn cat food.
    I need her to break. I need 1) Noelle to tell someone about my pregnancy; 2) the police to find the diary; 3) Andie to tell someone about the affair. I suppose I had her stereotyped – that a girl who posts updates on her life five times a day for anyone to see would have no real understanding of what a secret is. She’s made occasional grazing mentions of my husband online:
    Saw Mr Hunky today.
    (Oh, do tell!)
    (When do we get to meet this stud?)
    (Bridget likes this!)
    A kiss from a dreamy guy makes everything better.
    (Too true!)
    (When do we get to meet Dreamy?!)
    (Bridget likes this!)
    But she’s been surprisingly discreet for a girl of her generation. She’s a good girl (for a cunt). I can picture her, that heart-shaped face tilted to one side, the gently furrowed brow. I just want you toknow I’m on your side, Nick. I’m here for you . Probably baked him cookies.
    The Ellen Abbott cameras are now panning the Volunteer Center, which looks a little shabby. A correspondent is talking about how my disappearance has ‘rocked this tiny town,’ and behind her, I can see a table lined with homemade casseroles and cakes for poor Nicky. Even now the asshole has women taking care of him. Desperate women spotting an opening. A good-looking, vulnerable man – and fine, he may have killed his wife, but we don’t know