Gone Girl

fucking a twenty-three-year-old figure in to this rejuvenative picture?’ Betsy asked.
    Tanner lobbed a jellybean her way. ‘A little out of character, Bets.’
    ‘I’m sorry, guys, but I’m a woman, and that smells like bullshit, like mile-away bullshit. Recommit to the relationship, please . That girl was still in the picture when Amy went missing. Women are going to hate you, Nick, unless you suck it up. Be up-front, don’t stall. You can add it on: We lost our jobs, we moved, my parents were dying. Then I fucked up. I fucked up huge. I lost track of who I was, and unfortunately, it took losing Amy to realize it . You have to admit you’re a jerk and that everything was all your fault.’
    ‘So, like, what men are supposed to do in general,’ I said.
    Betsy flung an annoyed look at the ceiling. ‘And that’s an attitude, Nick, you should be real careful on.’

NICK DUNNE
    TEN DAYS GONE
    W e spent the day of the interview huddled in the spare bedroom of Tanner’s suite, prepping my lines, fixing my look. Betsy fussed over my clothes, then Go trimmed the hair above my ears with nail scissors while Betsy tried to talk me into using makeup – powder – to cut down on shine. We all spoke in low voices because Sharon’s crew was setting up outside; the interview would be in the suite’s living room, overlooking the St. Louis Arch. Gateway to the West. I’m not sure what the point of the landmark was except to serve as a vague symbol of the middle of the country: You Are Here .
    ‘You need at least a little powder, Nick,’ Betsy finally said, coming at me with the puff. ‘Your nose sweats when you get nervous. Nixon lost an election on nose sweat.’ Tanner oversaw it all like a conductor. ‘Not too much off that side, Go,’ he’d call. ‘Bets, be very careful with that powder, better too little than too much.’
    ‘We should have Botoxed him,’ she said. Apparently, Botox fights sweat as well as wrinkles – some of their clients got a series of underarm shots before a trial, and they were already suggesting such a thing for me. Gently, subtly suggesting, should we go to trial.
    ‘Yeah, I really need the press to get wind that I was having Botox treatments while my wife was missing,’ I said. ‘Is missing.’ I knew Amy wasn’t dead, but I also knew she was so far out of my reach that she might as well be. She was a wife in past tense.
    ‘Good catch,’ Tanner said. ‘Next time do it before it comes out of your mouth.’
    At five p.m., Tanner’s phone rang, and he looked at the display. ‘Boney.’ He sent it to voice mail. ‘I’ll call her after.’ He didn’t want any new bit of information, interrogation, gossip to force us to reformulate our message. I agreed: I didn’t want Boney in my head just then.
    ‘You sure we shouldn’t see what she wants?’ Go said.
    ‘She wants to fuck with me some more,’ I said. ‘We’ll call her. A few hours. She can wait.’
    We all rearranged ourselves, a mass group reassurance that the call was nothing to worry about. The room stayed silent for half a minute.
    ‘I have to say, I’m strangely excited to get to meet Sharon Schieber,’ Go finally said. ‘Very classy lady. Not like that Connie Chung .’
    I laughed, which was the intention. Our mother had loved Sharon Schieber and hated Connie Chung – she’d never forgiven her for embarrassing Newt Gingrich’s mother on TV, something about Newt calling Hilary Clinton a b-i-t-c-h. I don’t remember the actual interview, just our mom’s outrage over it.
    At six p.m. we entered the room, where two chairs were set up facing each other, the Arch in the background, the timing picked precisely so the Arch would glow but there would be no sunset glare on the windows. One of the most important moments of my life, I thought, dictated by the angle of the sun. A producer whose name I wouldn’t remember clicked toward us on dangerously high heels and explained to me what I should expect. Questions could be asked several times, to make the interview seem as smooth as possible, and to allow for Sharon’s reaction shots. I could not speak to my lawyer before giving an answer. I could rephrase an answer but not change the substance of the answer. Here’s some water, let’s get you miked.
    We started to move over to the chair, and Betsy nudged my arm. When I looked down, she showed me a pocket of jellybeans. ‘Remember …’ she said, and tsked her finger at me.
    Suddenly, the suite door swung