Gone Girl

iron, no stapler, and I remember asking him how he thought he was possibly civilized without a pair of scissors, and he said of course he wasn’t and swooped me up in his arms and threw me on the bed and pounced on top of me, and I laughed because I was still Cool Girl. I laughed instead of thinking about what it meant.
    One should never marry a man who doesn’t own a decent set of scissors. That would be my advice. It leads to bad things.
    I fold and pack my clothes in my tiny backpack – the same three outfits I bought and kept in my getaway car a month ago so I didn’t have to take anything from home. Toss in my travel toothbrush, calendar, comb, lotion, the sleeping pills I bought back when I was going to drug and drown myself. My cheap swimsuits. It takes such little time, the whole thing.
    I put on my latex gloves and wipe down everything. I pull out the drains to get any trapped hair. I don’t really think Greta and Jeff know who I am, but if they do, I don’t want to leave any proof, and the whole time I say to myself, This is what you get for relaxing, this is what you get for not thinking all the time, all the time. You deserve to get caught, a girl who acts so stupidly, and what if you left hairs in the front office, then what, and what if there are fingerprints in Jeff’s car or Greta’s kitchen, what then, why did you ever think you could be someone who didn’t worry? I picture the police scouring the cabins, finding nothing, and then, like a movie, I go in for a close-up of one lone mousy hair of mine, drifting along the concrete floor of the pool, waiting to damn me.
    Then my mind swings the other way: Of course no one is going to show up to look for you here . All the police have to go on is the claim of a few grifters that they saw the real Amy Elliott Dunne at a cheap broke-down cabin court in the middle of nowhere. Little people wanting to feel bigger, that’s what they’d assume.
    An assertive knock at the door. The kind a parent gives right before swinging the door wide: I own this place . I stand in the middle of my room and debate not answering. Bang bang bang. I understand now why so many horror movies use that device – the mysterious knock on the door – because it has the weight of a nightmare. You don’t know what’s out there, yet you know you’ll open it. You’ll think what I think: No one bad ever knocks .
    Hey, sweetheart, we know you’re home, open up!
    I strip off my latex gloves, open the door, and Jeff and Greta are standing on my porch, the sun to their backs, their features in shadow.
    ‘Hey, pretty lady, we come in?’ Jeff asks.
    ‘I actually – I was going to come see you guys,’ I say, trying to sound flippant, harried. ‘I’m leaving tonight – tomorrow or tonight. Got a call from back home, got to get going back home.’
    ‘Home Louisiana or home Savannah?’ Greta says. She and Jeff have been talking about me.
    ‘Louisi—’
    ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Jeff says, ‘let us in for a second, we come to say goodbye.’
    He steps toward me, and I think about screaming or slamming the door, but I don’t think either will go well. Better to pretend everything is fine and hope that is true.
    Greta closes the door behind them and leans against it as Jeff wanders into the tiny bedroom, then the kitchen, chatting about the weather. Opening doors and cabinets.
    ‘You got to clear everything out; Dorothy will keep your deposit if you don’t,’ he says. ‘She’s a stickler.’ He opens the refrigerator, peers into the crisper, the freezer. ‘Not even a jar of ketchup can you leave. I always thought that was weird. Ketchup doesn’t go bad.’
    He opens the closet and lifts up the cabin bedding I’ve folded, shakes out the sheets. ‘I always, always shake out the sheets,’ he says. ‘Just to make sure nothing is inside – a sock or underwear or what have you.’
    He opens the drawer of my bedside table, kneels down, and looks all the way to the back. ‘Looks like you’ve done a good job,’ he says, standing up and smiling, brushing his hands off on his jeans. ‘Got everything.’
    He scans me, neck to foot and back up. ‘Where is it, sweetheart?’
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘Your money.’ He shrugs. ‘Don’t make it hard. Me ’n her really need it.’
    Greta is silent behind me.
    ‘I have about twenty bucks.’
    ‘Lie,’ Jeff said. ‘You pay for everything, even rent, in cash. Greta saw you with that big wad of money. So hand it over,