Gone Girl

flashed. I turned away and saw spots. It was surreal. That’s what people always say to describe moments that are merely unusual. I thought: You have no fucking idea what surreal is . My hangover was really warming up now, my left eye throbbing like a heart.
    The cameras were clicking, and the two families stood together, all of us with mouths in thin slits, Go the only one looking even close to a real person. The rest of us looked like placeholder humans, bodies that had been dollied in and propped up. Amy, over on her easel, looked more present. We’d all seen these news conferences before – when other women went missing. We were being forced to perform the scene that TV viewers expected: the worried but hopeful family. Caffeine-dazed eyes and ragdoll arms.
    My name was being said; the room gave a collective gulp of expectation. Showtime .
    When I saw the broadcast later, I didn’t recognise my voice. I barely recognised my face. The booze floating, sludgelike, just beneath the surface of my skin made me look like a fleshy wastrel, just sensuous enough to be disreputable. I had worried about my voice wavering, so I overcorrected and the words came out clipped, like I was reading a stock report. ‘We just want Amy to get home safe …’ Utterly unconvincing, disconnected. I might as well have been reading numbers at random.
    Rand Elliott stepped up and tried to save me: ‘Our daughter, Amy, is a sweetheart of a girl, full of life. She’s our only child, and she’s smart and beautiful and kind. She really is Amazing Amy. And we want her back. Nick wants her back.’ He put a hand on my shoulder, wiped his eyes, and I involuntarily turned steel. My father again: Men don’t cry.
    Rand kept talking: ‘We all want her back where she belongs, withher family. We’ve set up a command center over at the Days Inn …’
    The news reports would show Nick Dunne, husband of the missing woman, standing metallically next to his father-in-law, arms crossed, eyes glazed, looking almost bored as Amy’s parents wept. And then worse. My longtime response, the need to remind people I wasn’t a dick, I was a nice guy despite the affectless stare, the haughty, douchebag face.
    So there it came, out of nowhere, as Rand begged for his daughter’s return: a killer smile.

AMY ELLIOTT DUNNE
    JULY 5, 2010
    – Diary entry –
    I won’t blame Nick. I don’t blame Nick. I refuse – refuse! – to turn into some pert-mouthed, strident angry-girl. I made two promises to myself when I married Nick. One: no dancing-monkey demands. Two: I would never, ever say, Sure, that’s fine by me (if you want to stay out later, if you want to do a boys’ weekend, if you want to do something you want to do) and then punish him for doing what I said was fine by me . I worry I am coming perilously close to violating both of those promises.
    But still. It is our third wedding anniversary and I am alone in our apartment, my face all mask-tight from tears because, well, because: Just this afternoon, I get a voice mail from Nick, and I already know it’s going to be bad, I know the second the voice mail begins because I can tell he’s calling from his cell and I can hear men’s voices in the background and a big, roomy gap, like he’s trying to decide what to say, and then I hear his taxi-blurred voice, a voice that is already wet and lazy with booze, and I know I am going to be angry – that quick inhale, the lips going tight, the shoulders up, the I so don’t want to be mad but I’m going to be feeling. Do men not know that feeling? You don’t want to be mad, but you’re obligated to be, almost. Because a rule, a good rule, a nice rule is being broken. Or maybe rule is the wrong word. Protocol? Nicety? But the rule/protocol/nicety – our anniversary – is being broken for a good reason, I understand, I do. The rumors were true: Sixteen writers have been laid off at Nick’s magazine. A third of the staff. Nick has been spared, for now, but of course he feels obliged to take the others out to get drunk. They are men, piled in a cab, heading down Second Avenue, pretending to be brave. A few have gone home to their wives, but a surprising number have stayed out. Nick will spend the night of our anniversary buying these mendrinks, going to strip clubs and cheesy bars, flirting with twenty-two-year-olds ( My friend here just got laid off, he could use a hug ). These jobless men will proclaim Nick a great guy as he buys their drinks on a