Gone Girl

fucking asses.
    B: That is an incredibly good point, Amy. I’m sorry, we’re so … We’ve spent so long on this case, we want to figure out every detail that we missed so we don’t repeat our mistakes. But you’re absolutely right, we’re missing the big picture, which is: You are a hero. You are an absolute hero.
    A: Thank you. I appreciate you saying that.

NICK DUNNE
    THE NIGHT OF THE RETURN
    I went to the station to fetch my wife and was greeted by the press like a rock star – landslide president – first moonwalker all in one. I had to resist raising clasped hands above my head in the universal victory shake. I see , I thought, we’re all pretending to be friends now .
    I entered a scene that felt like a holiday party gone awry – a few bottles of champagne rested on one desk, surrounded by tiny paper cups. Backslapping and cheers for all the cops, and then more cheers for me, as if these people hadn’t been my persecutors a day before. But I had to play along. Present the back for slapping. Oh yes, we’re all buddies now .
    All that matters is that Amy is safe. I’d been practicing that line over and over. I had to look like the relieved, doting husband until I knew which way things were going to go. Until I was sure the police had sawed through all her sticky cobwebby lies. Until she is arrested – I’d get that far, until she is arrested , and then I could feel my brain expand and deflate simultaneously – my own cerebral Hitchcock zoom – and I’d think: My wife murdered a man .
    ‘Stabbed him,’ said the young police officer assigned as the family liaison. (I hoped never to be liaisoned again, with anyone, for any reason.) He was the same kid who’d yammered on to Go about his horse and torn labrum and peanut allergy. ‘Cut him right through the jugular. Cut like that, he bleeds out in, like, sixty seconds.’
    Sixty seconds is a long time to know you are dying. I could picture Desi wrapping his hands around his neck, the feel of his own blood spurting between his fingers with each pulse, and Desi getting more frightened and the pulsing only quickening … and then slowing, and Desi knowing the slowing was worse. And all the time Amy standing just out of reach, studying him with the blameful, disgusted look of a high school biology student confronted with a dripping pig fetus. Her little scalpel still in hand.
    ‘Cut him with a big ole butcher knife,’ the kid was saying. ‘Guy used to sit right next to her on the bed, cut up her meat for her, and feed her.’ He sounded more disgusted by this than by the stabbing. ‘One day the knife slips off the plate, he never notices—’
    ‘How’d she use the knife if she was always tied up?’ I asked.
    The kid looked at me as if I’d just told a joke about his mother. ‘I don’t know, Mr Dunne, I’m sure they’re getting the details right now. The point is, your wife is safe.’
    Hurray. Kid stole my line.
    I spotted Rand and Marybeth through the doorway of the room where we’d given our first press conference six weeks ago. They were leaning in to each other, as always, Rand kissing the top of Marybeth’s head, Marybeth nuzzling him back, and I felt such a keen sense of outrage that I almost threw a stapler at them. You two worshipful, adoring assholes created that thing down the hall and set her loose on the world . Lo, how jolly, what a perfect monster! And do they get punished? No, not a single person had come forth to question their characters; they’d experienced nothing but an outpouring of love and support, and Amy would be restored to them and everyone would love her more.
    My wife was an insatiable sociopath before. What would she become now?
    Step carefully, Nick, step very carefully .
    Rand caught my eye and motioned me to join them. He shook my hand for a few exclusive reporters who’d been granted an audience. Marybeth held her ground: I was still the man who’d cheated on her daughter. She gave a curt nod and turned away.
    Rand leaned in close to me so I could smell his spearmint gum. ‘I tell you, Nick, we are so relieved to have Amy back. We owe you an apology too. Big one. We’ll let Amy decide how she feels about your marriage, but I want to at least apologize for where things went. You’ve got to understand—’
    ‘I do,’ I said. ‘I understand everything.’
    Before Rand could apologize or engage further, Tanner and Betsy arrived together, looking like a Vogue spread – crisp slacks and