Gone Girl

that. Not for sure. For now it’s a relief just to have a man to cook for, the fortysomething equivalent of driving your bike past the cute boy’s house.
    They are showing Nick’s grinning cell-phone photo again. I can picture the townie slut in her lonely, glistening kitchen – a trophy kitchen bought with alimony money – mixing and baking while having an imaginary conversation with Nick: No, I’m forty-three, actually. No, really, I am! No, I don’t have men swarming all over me, I really don’t, the men in town aren’t that interesting, most of them …
    I get a burst of jealousy toward that woman with her cheek against my husband’s. She is prettier than me as I am now. I eat Hershey bars and float in the pool for hours under a hot sun, the chlorine turning my flesh rubbery as a seal’s. I’m tan, which I’ve never been before – at least not a dark, proud, deep tan. A tanned skin is a damaged skin, and no one likes a wrinkled girl; I spent my life slick with SPF. But I let myself darken a bit before I disappeared, and now, five days in, I’m on my way to brown. ‘Brown as a berry!’ old Dorothy, the manager says. ‘You are brown as a berry, girl!’ she says with delight when I come in to pay next week’s rent in cash.
    I have dark skin, my mouse-colored helmet cut, the smart-girl glasses. I gained twelve pounds in the months before my disappearance – carefully hidden in roomy sundresses, not that my inattentive husband would notice – and already another two pounds since. I was careful to have no photos taken of me in the months before I disappeared, so the public will know only pale, thin Amy. I am definitely not that anymore. I can feel my bottom move sometimes, on its own, when I walk. A wiggle and a jiggle, wasn’t that some old saying? I never had either before. My body was a beautiful, perfect economy, every feature calibrated, everything in balance. I don’t miss it. I don’t miss men looking at me. It’s a relief to walk into a convenience store and walk right back out without some hangabout in sleeveless flannel leering as I leave, somemuttered bit of misogyny slipping from him like a nacho-cheese burp. Now no one is rude to me, but no one is nice to me either. No one goes out of their way, not overly, not really, not the way they used to.
    I am the opposite of Amy.

NICK DUNNE
    EIGHT DAYS GONE
    A s the sun came up, I held an ice cube to my cheek. Hours later, and I could still feel the bite: two little staple-shaped creases. I couldn’t go after Andie – a worse risk than her wrath – so I finally phoned her. Voice mail.
    Contain, this must be contained .
    ‘Andie, I am so sorry, I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what’s going on. Please forgive me. Please.’
    I shouldn’t have left a voice mail, but then I thought: She may have hundreds of my voice mails saved, for all I know . Good God, if she played a hit list of the raunchiest, nastiest, smittenist … any woman on any jury would send me away just for that. It’s one thing to know I’m a cheat and another to hear my heavy teacher voice telling a young co-ed about my giant, hard—
    I blushed in the dawn light. The ice cube melted.
    I sat on Go’s front steps, began phoning Andie every ten minutes, got nothing. I was sleepless, my nerves barbwired, when Boney pulled in to the driveway at 6:12 a.m. I said nothing as she walked toward me, bearing two Styrofoam cups.
    ‘Hey, Nick, I brought you some coffee. Just came over to check on you.’
    ‘I bet.’
    ‘I know you’re probably reeling. From the news about the pregnancy.’ She made an elaborate show of pouring two creamers into my coffee, the way I like it, and handed it to me. ‘What’s that?’ she said, pointing to my cheek.
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘I mean, Nick, what is wrong with your face? There’s a giant pink …’ She leaned in closer, grabbed my chin. ‘It’s like a bite mark.’
    ‘It must be hives. I get hives when I’m stressed.’
    ‘Mm-hmmm.’ She stirred her coffee. ‘You do know I’m on your side, right, Nick?’
    ‘Right.’
    ‘I am. Truly. I wish you’d trust me. I just – I’m getting to the point where I won’t be able to help you if you don’t trust me. I know that sounds like a cop line, but it’s the truth.’
    We sat in a strange semi-companionable silence, sipping coffee.
    ‘Hey, so I wanted you to know before you hear it anywhere,’ she said brightly. ‘We found Amy’s