Gone Girl

thought, but only guilty people need lawyers , so I nodded: No problem .
    ‘So: Amy,’ Boney said. ‘You two been living here how long?’
    ‘Just about two years.’
    ‘And she’s originally from New York. City.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘She work, got a job?’ Gilpin said.
    ‘No. She used to write personality quizzes.’
    The detectives swapped a look: Quizzes?
    ‘For teen magazines, women’s magazines,’ I said. ‘You know: “Are you the jealous type? Take our quiz and find out! Do guys find you too intimidating? Take our quiz and find out!”’
    ‘Very cool, I love those,’ Boney said. ‘I didn’t know that was an actual job. Writing those. Like, a career.’
    ‘Well, it’s not. Anymore. The Internet is packed with quizzes for free. Amy’s were smarter – she had a master’s in psychology – has a master’s in psychology.’ I guffawed uncomfortably at my gaffe. ‘But smart can’t beat free.’
    ‘Then what?’
    I shrugged. ‘Then we moved back here. She’s just kind of staying at home right now.’
    ‘Oh! You guys got kids, then?’ Boney chirped, as if she had discovered good news.
    ‘No.’
    ‘Oh. So then what does she do most days?’
    That was my question too. Amy was once a woman who did a little of everything, all the time. When we moved in together,she’d made an intense study of French cooking, displaying hyper-quick knife skills and an inspired boeuf bourguignon. For her thirty-fourth birthday, we flew to Barcelona, and she stunned me by rolling off trills of conversational Spanish, learned in months of secret lessons. My wife had a brilliant, popping brain, a greedy curiosity. But her obsessions tended to be fueled by competition: She needed to dazzle men and jealous-ify women: Of course Amy can cook French cuisine and speak fluent Spanish and garden and knit and run marathons and day-trade stocks and fly a plane and look like a runway model doing it . She needed to be Amazing Amy, all the time. Here in Missouri, the women shop at Target, they make diligent, comforting meals, they laugh about how little high school Spanish they remember. Competition doesn’t interest them. Amy’s relentless achieving is greeted with open-palmed acceptance and maybe a bit of pity. It was about the worst outcome possible for my competitive wife: A town of contented also-rans.
    ‘She has a lot of hobbies,’ I said.
    ‘Anything worrying you?’ Boney asked, looking worried. ‘You’re not concerned about drugs or drinking? I’m not speaking ill of your wife. A lot of housewives, more than you’d guess, they pass the day that way. The days, they get long when you’re by yourself. And if the drinking turns to drugs – and I’m not talking heroin but even prescription painkillers – well, there are some pretty awful characters selling around here right now.’
    ‘The drug trade has gotten bad,’ Gilpin said. ‘We’ve had a bunch of police layoffs – one fifth of the force, and we were tight to begin with. I mean, it’s bad , we’re overrun.’
    ‘Had a housewife, nice lady, get a tooth knocked out last month over some Oxycontin,’ Boney prompted.
    ‘No, Amy might have a glass of wine or something, but not drugs.’
    Boney eyed me; this was clearly not the answer she wanted. ‘She have some good friends here? We’d like to call some of them, just make sure. No offense. Sometimes a spouse is the last to know when drugs are involved. People get ashamed, especially women.’
    Friends. In New York, Amy made and shed friends weekly; they were like her projects. She’d get intensely excited about them: Paula who gave her singing lessons and had a wicked good voice (Amy went to boarding school in Massachusetts; I loved the very occasional times she got all New England on me: wicked good ); Jessie from the fashion-design course. But then I’d ask about Jessie orPaula a month later, and Amy would look at me like I was making up words.
    Then there were the men who were always rattling behind Amy, eager to do the husbandly things that her husband failed to do. Fix a chair leg, hunt down her favorite imported Asian tea. Men who she swore were her friends, just good friends. Amy kept them at exactly an arm’s distance – far enough away that I couldn’t get too annoyed, close enough that she could crook a finger and they’d do her bidding.
    In Missouri … good God, I really didn’t know. It only occurred to me just then. You truly are an asshole , I thought. Two years we’d been