Gone Girl

forty.’
    Ellen is filling the audience in on my story; my photo lingers on the screen.
    ‘Sounds to me like she was a spoiled rich girl,’ Greta says. ‘High-maintenance. Bitchy.’
    That is simply unfair. I’d left no evidence for anyone to conclude that. Since I’d moved to Missouri – well, since I’d come up with my plan – I’d been careful to be low-maintenance, easygoing, cheerful, all those things people want women to be. I waved to neighbors, I ran errands for Mo’s friends, I once brought cola to the ever-soiled Stucks Buckley. I visited Nick’s dad so that all the nurses could testify to how nice I was, so I could whisper over and over into Bill Dunne’s spiderweb brain: I love you, come live with us, I love you, come live with us . Just to see if it would catch. Nick’s dad is what the people of Comfort Hill call a roamer – he is always wanderingoff. I love the idea of Bill Dunne, the living totem of everything Nick fears he could become, the object of Nick’s most profound despair, showing up over and over and over on our doorstep.
    ‘How does she seem bitchy?’ I ask.
    She shrugs. The TV goes to a commercial for air freshener. A woman is spraying air freshener so her family will be happy. Then to a commercial for very thin panty liners so a woman can wear a dress and dance and meet the man she will later spray air freshener for.
    Clean and bleed. Bleed and clean.
    ‘You can just tell,’ Greta says. ‘She just sounds like a rich, bored bitch. Like those rich bitches who use their husbands’ money to start, like, cupcake companies and card shops and shit. Boutiques .’
    In New York, I had friends with all those kinds of businesses – they liked to be able to say they worked, even though they only did the little stuff that was fun: Name the cupcake, order the stationery, wear the adorable dress that was from their very own store.
    ‘She’s definitely one of those,’ Greta said. ‘Rich bitch putting on airs.’
    Greta leaves to go to the bathroom, and I tiptoe into her kitchen, go into her fridge, and spit in her milk, her orange juice, and a container of potato salad, then tiptoe back to the bed.
    Flush. Greta returns. ‘I mean, all that doesn’t mean it’s okay that he killed her. She’s just another woman, made a very bad choice in her man.’
    She is looking right at me, and I wait for her to say, ‘Hey, wait a minute …’
    But she turns back to the TV, rearranges herself so she is lying on her stomach like a child, her chin in her hands, her face directed at my image on the screen.
    ‘Oh, shit, here it goes,’ Greta says. ‘People are hatin’ on this guy.’
    The show gets underway, and I feel a bit better. It is the apotheosis of Amy.
    Campbell MacIntosh, childhood friend: ‘Amy is just a nurturing, motherly type of woman. She loved being a wife. And I know she would have been a great mother. But Nick – you just knew Nick was wrong somehow. Cold and aloof and really calculating – you got the feeling that he was definitely aware of how much money Amy had.’
    (Campbell is lying: She got all googly around Nick, she absolutely adored him. But I’m sure she liked the idea that he only married me for my money.)
    Shawna Kelly North, Carthage resident: ‘I found it really, really strange how totally unconcerned he was at the search for his wife. He was just, you know, chatting, passing the time. Flirting around with me, who he didn’t know from Adam. I’d try to turn the conversation to Amy, and he would just – just no interest.’
    (I’m sure this desperate old slut absolutely did not try to turn the conversation toward me.)
    Steven ‘Stucks’ Buckley, longtime friend of Nick Dunne: ‘She was a sweetheart. Sweet. Heart. And Nick? He just didn’t seem that worried about Amy being gone. The guy was always like that: self-centered. Stuck up a little. Like he’d made it all big in New York and we should all bow down.’
    (I despise Stucks Buckley, and what the fuck kind of name is that?)
    Noelle Hawthorne, looking like she just got new highlights: ‘I think he killed her. No one will say it, but I will. He abused her, and he bullied her, and he finally killed her.’
    (Good dog.)
    Greta glances sideways at me, her cheeks smushed up under her hands, her face flickering in the TV glow.
    ‘I hope that’s not true,’ she says. ‘That he killed her. It’d be nice to think that maybe she just got away, just ran away from him, and she’s hiding out all