Gone Girl

didn’t. I don’t know how it is you finally seemed genuine—’
    ‘Because last night it served an actual purpose: Get Amy back,’ Go said. ‘It was an offensive maneuver. Where before it would just be indulgent, undeserved, disingenuous emotion.’
    I gave her a thank-you smile.
    ‘Well, keep remembering that it is serving a purpose,’ Tannersaid. ‘Nick, I’m not fucking around here: This is beyond unorthodox. Most lawyers would be shutting you up. But it’s something I’ve been wanting to try. The media has saturated the legal environment. With the Internet, Facebook, YouTube, there’s no such thing as an unbiased jury anymore. No clean slate. Eighty, ninety percent of a case is decided before you get in the courtroom. So why not use it – control the story. But it’s a risk. I want every word, every gesture, every bit of information planned out ahead of time. But you have to be natural, likable, or this will all backfire.’
    ‘Oh, that sounds simple,’ I said. ‘One hundred percent canned yet totally genuine.’
    ‘You have to be extremely careful with your wording, and we will tell Sharon that you won’t answer certain questions. She’ll ask you anyway, but we’ll teach you how to say, Because of certain prejudicial actions by the police involved in this case, I really, unfortunately, can’t answer that right now, as much as I’d like to – and say it convincingly.’
    ‘Like a talking dog.’
    ‘Sure, like a talking dog who doesn’t want to go to prison. We get Sharon Schieber to take you on as a cause, Nick, and we are golden. This is all incredibly unorthodox, but that’s me,’ Tanner said again. He liked the line; it was his theme music. He paused and furrowed his brow, doing his pretend-thinking gesture. He was going to add something I wouldn’t like.
    ‘What?’ I asked.
    ‘You need to tell Sharon Schieber about Andie – because it’s going to come out, the affair, it just will.’
    ‘Right when people are finally starting to like me. You want me to undo that?’
    ‘I swear to you, Nick – how many cases have I handled? It always – somehow, some way, always comes out. This way we have control. You tell her about Andie and you apologize. Apologize literally as if your life depends on it. You had an affair, you are a man, a weak, stupid man. But you love your wife, and you will make it up to her. You do the interview, it’ll air the next night. All content is embargoed – so they can’t tease the Andie affair in their ads. They can just use the word bombshell .’
    ‘So you already told them about Andie?’
    ‘Good God, no,’ he said. ‘I told them: We have a nice bombshell for you . So you do the interview, and we have about twenty-four hours. Just before it hits TV, we tell Boney and Gilpin about Andie and about our discovery in the woodshed. Oh my gosh, we’ve putit all together for you: Amy is alive and she’s framing Nick! She’s crazy, jealous, and she is framing Nick! Oh, the humanity! ’
    ‘Why not tell Sharon Schieber, then? About Amy framing me?’
    ‘Reason one. You come clean about Andie, you beg forgiveness, the nation is primed to forgive you, they’ll feel sorry for you – Americans love to see sinners apologize. But you can reveal nothing to make your wife look bad; no one wants to see the cheating husband blame the wife for anything. Let someone else do it sometime the next day: Sources close to the police reveal that Nick’s wife – the one he swore he loved with all his heart – is framing him! It’s great TV.’
    ‘What’s reason two?’
    ‘It’s too complicated to explain exactly how Amy is framing you. You can’t do it in a sound bite. It’s bad TV.’
    ‘I feel sick,’ I said.
    ‘Nick, it’s—’ Go started.
    ‘I know, I know, it has to be done. But can you imagine, your biggest secret and you have to tell the world about it? I know I have to do it. And it works for us, ultimately, I think. It’s the only way Amy might come back,’ I said. ‘She wants me to be publicly humiliated—’
    ‘Chastened,’ Tanner interrupted. ‘Humiliated makes it sound like you feel sorry for yourself.’
    ‘—and to publicly apologize,’ I continued. ‘But it’s going to be fucking awful.’
    ‘Before we go forward, I want to be honest here,’ Tanner said. ‘Telling the police the whole story – Amy’s framing Nick – it is a risk. Most cops, they decide on a suspect and they don’t want to veer at all. They’re