Gone Girl

alpha-male rapist. I look like a twerp. I am a twerp. My goto karaoke song is “Sister Christian,” for crying out loud. I weep during Godfather II . Every time.’ He coughed after a swallow. Seemed like a moment to loosen him up.
    ‘Fredo?’ I asked.
    ‘Fredo, man, yeah. Poor Fredo.’
    ‘Stepped over.’
    Most men have sports as the lingua-franca of dudes. This was the film-geek equivalent to discussing some great play in a famous football game. We both knew the line, and the fact that we both knew it eliminated a good day’s worth of are we copacetic small talk.
    He took another drink. ‘It was so fucking absurd.’
    ‘Tell me.’
    ‘You’re not taping this or anything, right? No one’s listening in? Because I don’t want that.’
    ‘Just us. I’m on your side.’
    ‘So I meet Amy at a party – this is, like, seven years ago now – and she’s so damn cool. Just hilarious and weird and … cool. We just clicked, you know, and I don’t click with a lot of girls, at least not girls who look like Amy. So I’m thinking … well, first I’m thinking I’m being punked. Where’s the catch, you know? But we start dating, and we date a few months, two, three months, and then I find out the catch: She’s not the girl I thought I was dating. She can quote funny things, but she doesn’t actually like funny things. She’d rather not laugh, anyway. In fact, she’d rather that I not laugh either, or be funny, which is awkward since it’s my job, but to her, it’s all a waste of time. I mean, I can’t even figure out why she started dating me in the first place, because it seems pretty clear that she doesn’t even like me. Does that make sense?’
    I nodded, swallowed a gulp of Scotch. ‘Yeah. It does.’
    ‘So, I start making excuses not to hang out so much. I don’t call it off, because I’m an idiot, and she’s gorgeous. I’m hoping it might turn around. But you know, I’m making excuses fairly regularly: I’m stuck at work, I’m on deadline, I have a friend in town, my monkey is sick, whatever. And I start seeing this other girl, kinda sorta seeing her, very casual, no big deal. Or so I think . But Amy finds out – how, I still don’t know, for all I know, she was staking out my apartment. But … shit …’
    ‘Take a drink.’
    We both took a swallow.
    ‘Amy comes over to my place one night – I’d been seeing this other girl like a month – and Amy comes over, and she’s all back like she used to be. She’s got some bootleg DVD of a comic I like, an underground performance in Durham, and she’s got a sack of burgers, and we watch the DVD, and she’s got her leg flopped over mine, and then she’s nestling into me, and … sorry. She’s your wife. My main point is: The girl knew how to work me. And we end up …’
    ‘You had sex.’
    ‘ Consensual sex, yes. And she leaves and everything is fine. Kiss goodbye at the door, the whole shebang.’
    ‘Then what?’
    ‘The next thing I know, two cops are at my door, and they’vedone a rape kit on Amy, and she has “wounds consistent with forcible rape.” And she has ligature marks on her wrists, and when they search my apartment, there on the headboard of my bed are two ties – like, neckties – tucked down near the mattress, and the ties are, quote, “consistent with the ligature marks.”’
    ‘Had you tied her up?’
    ‘No, the sex wasn’t even that … that , you know? I was totally caught off guard. She must have tied them there when I got up to take a piss or whatever. I mean, I was in some serious shit. It was looking very bad. And then suddenly she dropped the charges. Couple of weeks later, I got a note, anonymous, typed, says: Maybe next time you’ll think twice .’
    ‘And you never heard from her again?’
    ‘Never heard from her again.’
    ‘And you didn’t try to press charges against her or anything?’
    ‘Uh, no. Fuck no. I was just glad she went away. Then last week, I’m eating my Thai food, sitting in my bed, watching the news report. On Amy. On you. Perfect wife, anniversary, no body, a real shitstorm. I swear, I broke out in a sweat. I thought: That’s Amy, she’s graduated to murder. Holy shit . I’m serious, man, I bet whatever she’s got cooked up for you, it’s drum-fucking-tight. You should be fucking scared.’

AMY ELLIOTT DUNNE
    EIGHT DAYS GONE
    I am wet from the bumper boats; we got more than five dollars’ worth of time because the two sun-stunned teenage girls would